Colours of Quortoth
by DragonKatGal
Summary: *Complete* Set after the Gift. When Buffy jumps into the portal, she ends up in Quortoth, and eventually meets Stephen. B/St (You KNOW you're curious)
1. Red

COLOURS OF QOURTOTH

SETTINGS: Bare with me.  I'm stuffing timelines up here to make this possible.  Begins directly after the Gift.  Ignores ALL of Season Six of Buffy.  Willow doesn't attempt the resurrection spell.  Eventually crosses over with the Angel episode 'Sleep Tight'.  What if Glory's hell dimensional home had been Quortoth, and seeing as Buffy jumped into the portal, she was sent there.

RATINGS: PG-13.  I don't write smut, so it's pretty user friendly.

PAIRING: Buffy/Steven.  (I'm stuffing around with his age in this too, so bare me with)

DISCLAIMER: Not mine.

ONWARDS:

CHAPTER ONE: RED

"Be brave.  Live.  For me."

It was bright.  Blinding really.  White lights and purple lightning flashing all around, the beginnings of a dull ache in her head as everything began to tear in two.  She could feel her soul, her entire being begin to rip in half, the pain of it all so intense, so much more than anything she had ever felt in her entire life.  And all she could do was scream silently as her body fell from the tower, plummeting towards the earth.

And then everything went red.

----

The first thing she noticed was the unending darkness.  Pitch black, pure nighttime.  She had spent the last six years in the dark, but nothing even came close to the blackness surrounding her now.  There was no lights, no stars in the sky or a moon overhead.  It was black.  And it was cold.

She shivered in the darkness, rubbing her hands over her arms, grateful for what little warmth her white long sleeved shirt gave her.  She blinked slowly, trying to adjust to the dark, but her eyes wouldn't allow it.  Behind her eyelids, she could see the echoes of the bright light that had engulfed her earlier, but when open, her eyes refused to show her anything.

She tried to stand, but her shaky legs wouldn't hold her.  She fell to her knees, trying to sort through her thoughts to determine where she was and why she was there.

She could remember the tower.  She could remember her sister about to jump, but she had stopped her just in time.  She remembered her epiphany.  Death was her gift.  She SHOULD have been dead.  Not that she was complaining or anything, but she couldn't understand it.

She heard something take a step behind her, and she immediately turned to face it, going into the best defensive position that she could without standing.  She felt something heavy collide with her cheek and she was sent sprawling to the ground.  She landed heavily on her wrist, which ached for some unknown reason.

She tried to pull herself up, but felt another heavy something smash into her ribs.  She wheezed heavily and her arms gave out, the Slayer now face down on the dirt floor.

She went to move again, but something was placed on her back, forcing her to stay down.  'A boot' she wondered idly.

"Slayer."

The voice wasn't gentle.  Then again, she hadn't really expected a gentle voice after being treated so horribly, but it still came out harsh and loud in the silent darkness.

"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice showing nothing of the fear that she felt.

The voice chuckled and she shivered involuntarily.

"Your executioner."

"Bit late," she replied sarcastically.  "I'm already dead."

Her reply earned her another kick to the head and she immediately held her tongue.  The aching throb in her head hadn't dulled at all, and she was beginning to see white spots.

"Foolish girl," the voice whispered.  "You stopped the link from being severed.  You defied fate and prophecy.  You ignored the signs that showed you how to defeat Glorificus.  You failed."

"My sister's still alive!  Glory's dead!  I didn't fail."

"You are dead, Slayer.  That is the ultimate failure for your kind."

"I did my duty for six years and all I ever got was more trouble.  I didn't fail!  I won!"

She was gripped on the shoulders and turned around, her back in the dirt, facing upwards.  She could tell that whoever the voice belonged to was close, their breath cold on her face, the smell almost overwhelming.  The grip on her shoulders didn't diminish one bit.

"You FAILED!  You may have won the battle against Glorificus, but the link was not severed.  The Key was meant to have completed her duty, but you denied the vessel that honour."

"You wanted me to let my sister die?" she demanded, struggling against the rough hands on her shoulders.  She tried to grip the wrists of her captor, but her hands passed through thin air.  She reached up to her shoulders where the bruising grip rested, but could feel nothing but her own shoulders where the hands were meant to be.  She tried desperately not to panic.

"The Key would have been rightfully restored to its proper form.  Your memories of your 'sister' would have been taken from you.  You would have won."

"My sister is alive!" Buffy cried.  "She's real dammit.  I don't care what those monks did to my memories, she's more real than you are.  She's innocent!  I wasn't going to let her DIE!"

Tears streamed down her face and she struggled to draw in breaths, her ribs aching.  Before she even knew what was going on, she was hauled to her feet and thrown across the blackness, hitting something solid.  It felt like a wall of rocks, edges jutting out to cut her skin, her clothes.  She went to move, but her hands came in contact with metal bars. She panicked and frantically scrambled around in the darkness trying to find a way out.

The voice laughed once more, the sound seeming so far away from her.

"I hope you can live with yourself Slayer.  Knowing what you've lost.  You've lost your life.  Your friends.  Your sister will die.  Everyone will die.  Your Watcher, your pet vampire.  They'll be killed and you won't be there to protect them.  Not without a Circle of Three."

She cried out to him as she heard his footsteps echoing in the darkness, becoming farther and farther away until she could no longer hear a thing except her own frantic heartbeat and the wet sobs that shook her body. She clutched at the bars, trying to wrap her mind around everything, but could no longer stay conscious.  And the blackness overtook.


	2. Black

CHAPTER TWO: BLACK

She would never know it, but it took four years in the blackness before she stopped talking to herself.  It took seven years before she began to give up hope.  And it took twelve years before she had sunk so far into the blackness that she began to forget her own name.  This was worse than hell, with eternal torture.  This was the darkness.  This was being alone.  This was everything that she feared, and she was trapped.  It took nearly fourteen years before she completely gave up.  She was here to stay and no one would ever find her.  She didn't even have the strength to cry at that realisation.

For the first few weeks in that first year, she wondered about where she was.  Hell maybe?  She didn't know.  Perhaps she was in hell and this was her torture.  Surrounded by the dark, isolated in a cage that only just let her stand up.  It was big enough for her to lie down in, but small enough for her to hate it with a fiery passion.

She neither hungered nor thirst.  She slept only to pass the time.  It was in the moments that she was awake that she understood that this was her punishment for acting rashly.  And yet, she wouldn't have changed a thing if it meant her sister was alive.

It was fifteen years before she heard a sound that she hadn't made.  It began faintly, a far off muffled thudding that echoed down the corridor of blackness.  She tensed, immediately alert, forcing herself to stand and take on a defensive position that she didn't know she remembered.

The sounds got closer.  Footsteps.  They were slow, casual.  As though whomever was coming towards her didn't have a car in the world.  She couldn't see him (for that was how she thought of the intruder) through the darkness, and so she just listened and waited for him to get closer.

It was strange.  Fifteen years alone and she could still sense when something that wasn't of the good was about to occur.  Fifteen years in isolation, and she could still tell you exactly how far away the newcomer was.  Fifteen years in the dark and she could tell you how tall he was.  And he really wasn't tall.  Her height maybe, if she could remember how tall she was.

"How's it goin'?" the voice asked.  

The question startled her.  Her voice hadn't been used since for nearly eleven years.  Her ears hadn't heard a thing for fifteen years, and her conversation skills hadn't really been practiced since then.

She didn't answer.

"Stupid question I guess," the voice continued.  It was soft, gentle, almost teasing.  There was a strange accent to it, a kind of lilt that she had heard before.  Where she'd heard it though, she could place.  And so she let him speak.

"This whole cage thing must really suck for ya," he went on, almost conversationally.  She glared in the darkness, almost wishing for the silence back.  If they intended to break her by annoying her to death, she wouldn't let them.

"Oh, don't worry Slayer, I'm not here to annoy you to death," the voice said, laughing a little.  "I'm here to get you out."

That made her glare disappear almost instantly, a spark of hope shooting up within her. 

"Out?" her voice was quiet, strained.  The word almost never made it past her lips, and in Sunnydale the question wouldn't have been heard over the usual volume that was set.  But here, in the silent darkness, it was heard.

"Yeah kid, out.  Out of this blackness, out of that cage."

She swallowed hard and squinted in the darkness, able to see the man's outline.  

"Who are you?"

The man gave a small laugh.

"I'm hurt kid," he said.  She could tell he was smiling.  "You don't remember your old pal?  The name Whistler ringing any bells?"

She quickly sorted through her memories, trying to place the name and the accent.

It came rushing back to her.  A time and a place she had tried so hard to forget when she'd been alive.  A time and a place she hadn't really given too much thought to since being stuck in the darkness.

----- "Who are you?"

"Whistler."

"What are you, just some immortal demon sent down to even the score between good and evil?"

"Good guess." -----

"Ahhh, the kid remembers.  Well done.  It took the Powers kind of a while to work out where the hell you'd gone, pun completely intended."

She stared at him, again with the vacant expression that was a constant mask.  

"So, where am I then?"

Whistler laughed a little at that.

"You jump into a portal that leads to a hell dimension and you ask where you are," he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

She wasn't amused and remained silent until he eventually sighed and stopped laughing.

"Quortoth.  Glory and two others reigned over it, but then Glory decided she didn't like sharing.  She tried to kill off the other two gods, but ended up getting kicked out of here for her troubles.  Problem with Quortoth is, there's no way in or out, except ripping through the fabric of reality.  And the Key of course.  But that was a once in a millennia deal."

Her head spun, and she tried desperately to keep up with what he was saying.  Trying to process so much information after having been in silence for over fifteen years was a little overwhelming for her.  She leant back against the rock wall, thankful to have something solid to fall against.

"Why are you here?" she eventually asked.

He grinned and stepped forward, touching the metal bars to the cage that had surrounded her for a decade and a half.

"To set you free." 

She felt the air around her change as the bars to the cage that she had been trapped in disappeared.  Suddenly, the sense of how big and consuming the darkness really was, floated through her.  She had been safe in her cage,  she had known what to expect.  Absolutely nothing.

Now, here this demon was, setting her free, taking away her security net and telling her that she could go.  Something akin to fear settled into her bones.  Home.  Home.

Whistler made a small clucking sound as that particular thought ran through her mind.

"You're not going home just yet kid.  The Powers don't have that kind of power.  Which, if you're into the whole irony thing, is kinda funny."

She glared at him in the darkness.  He reminded her of Spike.  Annoying, but still wanting to help.

"You gotta find your own way home.  See, it's kind of a test too.  To see if you're strong enough to get out.  Smart enough."

She swallowed hard and tried not to let her knees collapse beneath her.  A test?  She hadn't had to do a single thing for so long and here she was being offered a chance to get home if she passed the test.  But how would she get home?  What were the trials that she had to endure.  It didn't make sense!

"Course not," Whistles said, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Huh?"

"You think it doesn't make sense.  It doesn't.  And you don't have to pass any trials.  You have to figure out your own way back."

"You just said there's no way in and no way out."

"Not just a pretty face," Whistler teased.  "Good to know you can think on your feet."

She shifted her weight, wondering if the Powers would approve if she killed the messenger.

Whistler stepped back when that thought reached him.

"No killing anyone just yet kid.  What's the first thing you remember after you jumped into the portal?"

She thought back and immediately grimaced as the memory came to her.  A voice.  Harsh, violent.  Being kicked around and locked in the cage.  Not the most pleasant of memories.  

"Right, what do you remember him saying?"

----- "You FAILED!"

"Your sister will die.  Everyone will die." -----

She closed her eyes.  She had replayed those words over in her mind for the last fifteen years, conjuring up images of her friends, her family, everyone she had ever cared about dead because she had failed.

"You didn't fail kid," Whistler whispered gently.

"I killed them," she whispered sadly.  A tear rolled down her cheek, the first tear in nearly seven years.  She hadn't allowed herself the luxury of self-pity before now.  

"They're not dead."

"I don't know how long it's been, but it's been a long time.  They're dead.  No one would remember me now.  No one would want to."

"You've been here for fifteen years.  But your fifteen years here have been under a week there."

She stopped, completely shocked.

"A week?"

"Yeah, kid.  A week.  They haven't even buried you yet."

She remained silent.  Thinking about your own burial was just a little too much to take in, let alone make an intelligent comment about.

"They're alright kid.  They're not too happy, but they're not dead.  None of them.  You saved them."

She sniffled and wiped her tears away, hating to indulge in this self pity in front of someone she barely knew.

"So why?"

The question caught Whistler off guard.  He hadn't been anticipating it, and considering he had been following her thoughts, it was a definite surprise.

"Why what?"

"Why did whoever it was tell me I'd failed?"

"You're in a hell dimension kid.  They're gonna tell you whatever they want to make you feel like crap."

It made sense, she thought quietly.  Kick her while she's already down.  Cos how much farther down can you go than death?  That's a pretty far decline from life.  Although, the last six months of her life hadn't exactly been brilliant at all.

"So what am I meant to be remembering then?" she asked.

She was slowly getting reacquainted with the whole talking thing.  After fifteen years it was a little stilted, but she found it easy to pick up, especially when it came to business.  Especially when it came down to a matter of life and death.  Those, she was pretty good at.

"Circle of Three," Whistler replied.

"Which would be what?"

He smiled in the darkness and touched her shoulder.  She flinched, startled by how unfamiliar it felt to have someone touching her.

"You'll find out."

The air shifted again and she could tell he was gone.  She wanted to cry, yell, scream, curse the Powers that Be for leaving her there.  Why couldn't they take her out of the hell dimension when they could send the most annoying messenger in all history in.

She sat, trying to think about what she could possibly do to get out of her predicament.  The phrase 'been through worse' flitted through her mind.  She almost laughed at that.  What could possibly be worse than being alone in the dark for all eternity.  

She sat for several hours, eventually drifting into a light doze.

She had stopped dreaming years ago, her days and nights filled with the endless blackness that consumed her, swallowed her whole.  There was no real sense of time, though she knew that it had felt like an eternity.  Whistler had said fifteen years.  But, even in the darkness, she knew she hadn't aged.

Her skin was still smooth, her hands still felt young, her strength still there, even though it was unpractised, lying dormant.  She would have thought that she was undead if it weren't for the heartbeat and the necessity to breathe.  She didn't understand the science behind what she now was.  She was never hungry, never thirsty, never tired, though she slept to kill time.  

But on this night, when Whistler had visited her, she dreamt.

~*~


	3. Blue

CHAPTER THREE: BLUE

Somehow it seemed fitting that on the day the Slayer was buried, the sun refused to shine.  Why should anything be bright on the day that the lightest being in the world was being plunged into eternal darkness.

_The Scooby Gang gathered around the new plot, tears running down faces, not even one of them had dry eyes.  _

_Even Gunn and Fred who had tagged along for the funeral were crying, somewhat oblivious to the fact that they had never met the girl who was being placed into the earth._

_Giles stood behind Dawn, a fatherly hand on her shoulder.  Spike stood next to Dawn, taking on a surrogate big brother position.  On Dawn's other side stood Xander, Anya clinging to him tightly.  Willow and Tara stood beside Spike leaning against each other for support._

_On the other side of the newest plot in Restfield Cemetery stood the crew from Angel Investigations.  Angel could only stare at the headstone blankly, somewhat unbelieving that the only girl he had ever loved now lay in the ground._

_Cordy stood beside him, a comforting hand on his arm.  Beside her was Wesley who had tried his hardest to retain his stiff upper-lip, but had broken down when he had seen the devastated expression on Giles' face.  Gunn and Fred stood slightly to the side, silent tears on their cheeks as they stood awkwardly around the grave._

_The casket had yet to be lowered, and the lid to the coffin was still open.  It escaped no one's notice that even in death, the Slayer was beautiful._

_They stood there, each in silent reflection.  Sniffling, Xander was the first to step forward._

_"I've never met anyone like Buffy before.  I doubt I ever will again.  She…I was in love with her.  For years.  And then she became like a sister.  More than a sister really.  She was my best friend.  I told her once that when it was dark and I was alone and scared, I thought of her and everything that was scary suddenly went away.  She was my hero.  She was so much more than the Slayer, but she loved helping people.  And it's only right that the Powers chosen warrior is buried with her weapon of choice.  Her crossbow."_

_He placed the favoured crossbow into the coffin near her feet, three bolts already loaded onto it.  He wiped his eyes, kissed the girls forehead and stepped back in line._

_Willow stepped forward slowly, clearing her throat, wishing not for the first time that it was her in the box instead of her best friend._

_"I always thought that Buffy and I would grow old together.  I remember telling Tara that Buffy and I were meant to room together through college and then well into little-old-lady hood, with me reminding her to take her pills.  But she's gone now," she said, biting her lower lip to steady herself._

_"She's gone and she's not coming back.  She's gone, but she's not forgotten.  And…like Xander said, Buffy was a warrior.  Just like Kendra.  And Kendra once gave Buffy her favourite stake, just before she died.  It's only right that Mr Pointy gets buried here as well."_

_It took all of Willow's strength to step forward and mould the stake in place in the Slayer's right hand. Even in death, the stake in Buffy's hand looked natural, like an attachment that should never have been severed._

_Dawn touched Willow's shoulder as she stood next to the open casket.  Without a word, she placed a pair of leather pants, black t-shirt and the leather jacket that Angel had given to Buffy in the first year of being in Sunnydale under Buffy's head, acting as a pillow._

_"You always looked like the Slayer when you wore leather," Dawn whispered, kissing her sister's cheek.  She didn't bother to wipe away the errant tear that trickled down her own cheek and splashed onto her sisters, making it appear that the dead Slayer herself had been weeping._

_Giles stepped forward as the two young women took their places, Spike putting a comforting hand on Dawn's shoulder as they watched the Watcher pay his final respects._

_He was silent for a moment, and Wesley watched him with unguarded fascination.  Ever since he had been assigned as Buffy's Watcher he had noticed the affection that Buffy and Giles had held for each other.  It was more than that of Slayer and Watcher.  It was more than that of a Father and Daughter.  It was two equals put together on this earth to rid the world of darkness.  Wesley had never heard of a more successful or formidable team than Buffy and Giles._

_"I don't think I ever told you that I loved you," Giles whispered, affectionately touching his Slayer's hair.  "You crept into my heart and stayed there from the very first day.  You were so much more than just the Slayer…you were a girl, a woman.  You were everything a Slayer should have been Buffy.  And I am so very proud of you."_

_He placed his very first Watcher's journal into the casket, placing it next to her empty hand.  The Council had made copies of it when they had confiscated the journals when he had been fired.  They had sent the journals back with Wesley on his first journey to Sunnydale and Giles had never seen them again until Wes had returned them this very morning._

_Spike looked towards Xander who shuffled over to take over his position as Dawn's leaning post.  The blonde vampire stepped forward and took a place beside the Watcher.  _

_"She did good Rupert," Spike said softly.  _

_Giles could only nod and whispered "Yes" as a reply._

_Spike reached into his pocket and removed a small velveteen box.  He opened it as Giles watched in curiousity.  He was somewhat surprised to see a silver cross placed neatly in the box.  He was even more surprised when Spike picked it up and carefully placed it around Buffy's neck, ignoring the painful singeing of his skin as he arranged on the girls pale neck._

_"Rest well luv," Spike whispered._

_He touched Giles shoulder briefly and they stepped back into their positions in line.  _

_On the other side of the plot, Angel stepped forward, tears flowing freely._

_"In 245 years, I have only ever loved one person with my entire being," Angel said, running his hands through Buffy's locks of blonde hair.  "Since I first saw you I knew that I loved you.  I love you still.  You gave me everything that you had to give me Buffy.  You gave me love.  You were loyal to me when no one else was.  You were my friend even when it hurt to be close to me. All I can give you know is a symbol of that.  You will always have my friendship, my loyalty, and above all, my love."_

_With that, he slipped the small silver ring out of his pocket and lifted Buffy's left hand, almost expecting it to feel warm to touch.  But it was cold, very much like his own.  He missed her warmth.  He placed the ring on her finger and leant over the casket to gently kiss her lips one last time._

_Giles stepped forward again and gently lowered the lid, memorising the peaceful look on his Slayer's face.  He held back tears knowing that it would be the last time he would ever see his Slayers face.  The lid closed and the world went black._

~*~


	4. Crimson

CHAPTER FOUR: CRIMSON

She opened her eyes only to shut them again immediately.  She must still be dreaming, she thought.  She tried again, opening them slowly, only to find that she hadn't been hallucinating.  Bright colours almost blinded her and she brought her arm up to cover her eyes.

For nearly half an hour she slowly regained the use of her eyesight.  After fifteen years of pitch black, the sudden switch to astoundingly bright colours was a little much for her.  

When her eyes had finally adjusted she looked out of the cave.  The first thing she noticed was the sky.  Where usually she would have been horrified to see the crimson colour of it, it was far better than the eternal blackness that had assaulted her eyes for the last decade and a half.  Any colour was welcome, even the blood red sky.

Beneath the sky was what looked like a barren wasteland.  There were dead stumps everywhere, the ground a dirty red dusty colour.  The black stumps stood out obviously, looking like ants crawling across the ground.

She swallowed hard, trying not to panic again.  It hadn't helped her at all in the cave when Whistler had been telling her everything that had needed to be explained.  She concentrated on her breathing as Giles had taught her, and for an instant, she was transported back to the training room, the gentle British man at her sides.

"There is nothing but you.  You are the centre.  And within you, there is the core of your being…of what you are.  Find it.  Breath into it.  Focus inward.  Let the world fall away.  Fall away.  Fall away."

Surprisingly, it helped.  A sense of inner calm swept through her and her breathing became regulated.  She opened her eyes once more and put her hands onto the ground to push herself up.  She stopped and suddenly realised that even though the object in her hand felt so incredibly right, it shouldn't really have been there.

Mr Pointy in her right hand.  The Claddagh ring Angel had given her for her seventeenth birthday on her left hand.  A leather bound journal resting underneath her hand.  The soft pillow she had woken on was the neatly folded leather jacket and leather pants that had been her favourites.  Around her neck was the silver cross that Angel had thrown at her on their first meeting.  Her crossbow lay at her feet.

Her dream, it seemed, hadn't been entirely a dream after all.  As the Slayer, she had been used to receiving prophetic reams, visions that showed her what would happen unless she prevented it.  Usually all of her dreams had come to pass in some way or another.  Last nights dream hadn't been any different.  

Perhaps the Powers That Be had decided to bestow upon her the gifts that her friends had deigned it necessary for her to be buried with.

She looked down at herself, surprised to see her clothing.  It wasn't the outfit that she was sure she had been in for the last fifteen years.  From feel alone, she could tell that only yesterday she had been wearing the clothes she had plunged off the tower in.  Today however, she was in a simple white dress, obviously the clothes that the Gang had buried her in.

Somehow, she was extremely grateful to Dawn burying her leathers with her.  She stood up shakily and quickly stripped herself of the white cotton, replacing it with the black leather and cotton t-shirt.  The contrast was stark, but she immediately felt as though she was back in her own skin when the dress was off.

When she had been alive, she had enjoyed getting dressed up, playing the part of the normal girl, but it hadn't been who she really was.  It hadn't been her at all.  The leathers, the dark colours, they had been who she really was.  A hunter.  A warrior.  The Chosen One.

She slipped the stake into the inside pocket of her jacket and slung the crossbow over her shoulder.  She was thankful that Xander had buried her with her favourite crossbow, and not just a random one.  Her favourite bow had been specially fitted with a shoulder strap to make the slaying easier.  She could drop the crossbow and still keep it with her.  Plus, Giles had always told her off for throwing weapons around, considering they were likely to get damaged rather easily.

The shoes she had been buried in were hardly appropriate for whatever tests the Powers That Be wanted to put her through.  She sighed as she wrapped the white sandals in the dress.

She bent down to pick up the last item, reverently touching the leather bound journal.  Tears pricked her eyes as she inhaled the scent of it.  It was a mixture of tea and musty books, plus the leathery smell that she had always loved.  She opened it slowly and looked at the words inside.  

_Rupert Giles.  Watcher.  Son of Edmund Giles and Patricia Giles (nee Rolands)._

_Watcher to Elizabeth 'Buffy' Anne Summers.  _

_1996 – 2001._

She could see that the 2001 had only been recently added, the ink colour distinctly different, the hand-writing a little different as well.  

Seeing the years suddenly cut off made everything seem so much more real.  She was really no longer on earth.  She was in some demon dimension, Quortoth, Whistler had called it.  She was stuck here for who knew how long until she could find something called a Circle of Three, whatever that was.

She closed her eyes and forced the thoughts of home out of her mind.  She had trials to endure and she could hardly do so while she was sitting in the darkened cave feeling sorry for herself.

She closed the journal and placed it into the folded up dress with the sandals.  She ripped off two pieces of the material from the dress and used one to tie the bundle up and the other to create a makeshift strap.  She slung it diagonally over her shoulder, shifting the crossbow so that the weapon was on top and easy to reach.

Hesitating only momentarily, she stepped out of the 'comfort' of the cave and out onto the dirt covered land.  


	5. Brown

CHAPTER FIVE: BROWN

It was strange, she decided about three hours into the lonely walk.  She had seen absolutely nothing in this barren wasteland except for dust and the occasional tree stump.  There didn't seem to be any monsters, demons or vampires, which, considering she was in a hell dimension, seemed to be rather unsettling.

The sun here seemed to be hotter, her leather jacket long since discarded, her shirt sticking to the back of her neck with sweat.  Her feet ached with calluses and blisters, her feet stained brown from the dust, tinged with red from blood.

Small rocks pierced the bottom of her feet, making them bleed uncomfortably, but she continued to walk.  It was nearly five hours before she saw anything even remotely dangerous.

The sight of a small pond of blue water swam into her vision, but the Slayer dismissed it immediately.  For one thing, the water shouldn't have been blue, seeing as it should have been reflecting the blood red sky.  For another thing, she knew without a doubt that she was hallucinating.  Probably the heat of the sun had gotten to her to make her see things that she wanted to see.  Of course, if that was actually the case, she probably would be seeing a blue sky and her home town of Sunnydale.

The more she kept walking, the closer it got, and when she was within arms length of it, she looked down to see the ripples.  It seemed to be real enough.

She bent down to touch it, the feel of water on her skin after so many years seemed unfamiliar, and yet so very welcome.  She swept her hand through the water and felt comforted by the coolness of the liquid.

She ran her wet hand over her face, brushing her hair out of her eyes and slicking it back.  After faltering for only a moment, she stripped off her shirt and soaked it in the water, replacing it on her back, sending cool shivers down her spin.  She cupped her hands together and drank deeply, her throat dry and sore from the wind and lack of refreshments.

In her cave she hadn't craved for food or water, but now that water was directly in front of her, she couldn't seem to stay away from it.  Like a moth to a flame.

She stopped immediately when she heard a sound from behind her.  She stayed crouched low to the ground, lowing furtively around her, grabbing the crossbow and making sure it was loaded properly.

She couldn't see anything around her, though the sun was beginning to set and visibility was becoming poor.  She strained her eyes and looked out into the fading light, listening carefully.  When she got home, she would definitely thank Giles for his careful training in all of her senses. 

For five minutes she crouched by the water, her crossbow ready.  She hadn't heard another sound, but she knew she hadn't just been hearing things.  Another five minutes passed and she put the crossbow down beside her within reach.

As soon as she turned back to the pool, she felt the air shift around her, felt another presence in her midst.  Without thinking she grabbed the crossbow and turned in one swift move, firing a single bolt and automatically reloading the weapon.  She didn't need to reload it though.

Her stalker was dead on the ground, the crossbow bolt directly in its heart.  It spluttered momentarily before its body relaxed and breathed it's last breathe.  She approached carefully, having been trained well enough to know that not all demons died so easily.  On closer examination, she could tell that the demon was dead.  She yanked the bolt out of the demons chest and cleaned it with water from the pond, adding it to the spare chambers of the bow.

With a relieved sigh, she listened to the now dark air around her but heard nothing.  Alert and on guard, she sat beside the water and lay down with her crossbow in her hands.  Closing her eyes, she managed to sleep.

------------------------

For years on end, this routine continued.  She would walk, she would sleep, she would fight.  Often, she would pass out due to blood loss, but she found that not only did she never age, but she never died.  She had yet to decide if it was a blessing or a curse.

Her scars healed after several years, her memories became vague, though certain faces stayed in her memory.  Dawn, Giles, Willow and Xander.  Spike, Tara and Anya were there on the periphery, but the core Scooby Gang and her sister stayed bright in her memory.

It was over four centuries later that Buffy noticed the massive shift in the air.  She was now used to the small movements of the demons around her.  She was used to the daily schedules of most of the demons.  She had no real concept of time, no real concept of what anything was any more.  All she knew was that if she didn't fight, she would be injured.  And seeing as she couldn't die, it was better to kill them off before they could hurt her too badly.

She couldn't tell what the shift was, couldn't distinguish it at all.  All she knew was that something felt different.  Something that wasn't a demon had joined them on this plane of reality.  But for now, all she could do was continue to fight.


	6. Green

CHAPTER SIX: GREEN

Sunnydale: Three months after Buffy's death 

Willow, Tara, Xander and Anya knelt around Buffy's grave, solemn expressions on their faces.  Willow was at the foot of the grave, a candle in her hands.

"Start the circle.  Now."

Willow brought out a small jar and poured the fawn's blood into the urn of Osiris.  Tara, Xander and Anya shifted nervously, looking on curiously.

"Osiris, Keeper of the Gate, Master of all Fate, hear us," Willow recited.  She had spent the better part of the last months memorising the incantation.  She knew she would only have one chance to perfect this spell, and damned if she was going to fail.

She dipped her finger into the urn and smeared three small lines on her forehead and cheeks.

"Before time and after.  Before knowing and nothing."

She tipped the remains of the blood onto the foot of Buffy's grave.

"Accept our offering.  Know our prayer."

She jerked backwards suddenly, a pain rushing through her chest.  She gasped as deep gashes appeared on her bare arms, blood beginning to stream from the wounds.

"Willow!" Xander cried, about to stand and break the circle.

"No!" Tara cried.  "She t-told me…she'd be tested.  This is supposed to happen."

Willow had mentioned tests, she'd mentioned small amounts of pain, but this was going into the realm of fierce mutilation.  

"Osiris!  Hear lies the warrior of the people.  Let her cross over!"

Small bumps appeared in her skin, making their way up her arms and onto her throat.

"She needs help!" Xander exclaimed.

"Xander, she's strong.  She said not to stop, no matter what.  If we break the cycle now, it's over," Tara explained firmly.

Willow nearly lost her balance and fell forward, her palms digging into the earth.

"Osiris, let her cross over!"

She cried out in pain and began choking, a large snake coming from her mouth.  She tried desperately not to panic, but she could feel the fear rising within her.  She reminded herself to keep breathing and let the snake fall freely from her mouth.  The others looked on in horror.

"Osiris!  Release her!"

Xander, Tara and Anya could only watch as Willow chanted loudly.  They were so caught up in the orange whirlwind that surrounded their friend that they didn't even notice the vampire advancing towards them.  For a newly-risen fledgling, he was fairly gutsy and moved towards the group.  

Ignoring the magic swirling around the red headed witch, he grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her forward, the three others screaming in shock.  The urn smashed as Willow landed heavily on top of it.  Xander quickly grabbed a stake from his belt and the new vampire was swiftly dispatched.

Willow gasped in pain as the rush of magic went back into her.  "No!"

She tried to remain conscious, but her head felt heavy.  Her world went black and the others stared at her in wide-eyed horror.

It was ten minutes before Willow came to, Tara softly stroking her hair, Xander standing guard over her, a stake at the ready.

"Tara?" Willow whispered, her throat feeling incredibly sore.

"I'm here baby," Tara whispered softly, kissing her girlfriends forehead gently.

"What…did the ritual work?" 

Tara shook her head, tears in her eyes.  "I'm sorry.  We…we can try again."

Willow closed her eyes in pain and blinked back tears.

"The urn?"

"It's broken," Tara replied.

Willow swallowed hard and tried not to burst into another bout of sobs.

"Will, it's okay.  We'll get another one," Xander said comfortingly.

"There is no other one," Tara explained.

Xander finally felt defeated.  They had been researching for spells to bring Buffy back from the very beginning, deliberately not telling Dawn, Spike or Giles.  They had the most to lose if the spell didn't work, and their lack of knowledge somehow made their failure easier.

Willow finally burst into full-fledged sobbing.  "Buffy's gone.  She's really gone."

------------------------

Los Angeles: Seven months after Buffy's death 

They were standing at an impasse.  Holt stood with Connor in his arms, a dangerous glint in his eyes, Justine standing next to him.  Angel stood with an automatic weapon aimed at Lilah Morgan and her commando lackeys.  Across from Holt stood Sahjan.

"So I'm going to take him," Holtz declared, sounding confident.  "With me he gets to live, anyone tries to take him, he dies."

"Take him," Angel said, a pained expression on his face.  He would rather let his son live with a man hell bent on revenge than let Lilah and her cronies riddle his tiny body with bullets.

"Woah!  No!  What is wrong with you people?" Sahjan exclaimed, feeling extremely cheated.  He had made several arrangements with different people to ensure that Angel's child died, but none of his associates seemed to be keeping their side of the bargain.

"I will take good care of him, as though he were my own son," Holtz said.  "He'll never even know you existed.  Don't come after me.  You will though won't you?  Maybe I should just-"

Holtz went to snap Connor's neck and Angel panicked.

"No!  Please…Take him."

Sahjan raised his hands, almost going unnoticed by the group.  His words in an ancient language, however, managed to bring him attention. 

"Lekko najine forkahdio!" 

A bright burst of red opened up in the sky, a portal leading to a hellish dimension.

"What you are looking into is the Quortoth, the darkest of the dark worlds.  So…I can widen the portal and you can all be swallowed up by a world you cannot begin to imagine, or you can keep your world and kill that child.  Now!"

No one moved and Sahjan moved his arms, making the portal open even wider.  

"Don't say I didn't warn you!"

"Kill it!" Lilah yelled.

"No!" Angel cried, his weapon still aimed at Lilah.

In the confusion, Holtz pushed Justine away from him and charged towards the portal opening.  Angel dropped the gun and raced after him, Holtz jumping through before Angel could reach him.  Angel went to jump through but the portal rejected him and he went flying backwards.

"Wow," Sahjan said, a distinct note of irony in his voice.  "I didn't count on that.  Kinda takes care of my problem."

The demon raised his hands again and the ancient lanuage strew forth once more.  "Forkahdio najine lekko."

The portal closed, leaving Angel and Justine looking wistfully at the now clear horizon of the Los Angeles sky.  Angel didn't even hear any of what was happening around him.  His only thoughts on his lost son, taken to a hell dimension where no one could ever bring him back.

"Connor."


	7. Pink

CHAPTER SEVEN: PINK

Daniel couldn't say exactly how long he and Stephen had been voluntarily trapped in Quortoth.  He smiled as he saw Stephen enter the small living area of the makeshift hut he had created to protect the young boy.  He looked to be about eighteen, the only indicator of how long they had truly been in this dimension.

In those eighteen years, he had had to defend himself, his house and his son on more occasions than he could count.  From the age of about seven, Stephen had begun to learn to fight for himself.  By ten, he was winning more battles against the demons, but still getting injured.  

By sixteen, he had learned that as invincible as he thought he was, he was still a mortal.  A damageable mortal at that.  And if he died, he would be leaving his dad all alone in a hell dimension.

For the last eighteen years, he had been told about what the world was really meant to be like.  Blue sky, blue waters, an endless ocean, people; billions of people.  The exact opposite of this hell that his father had been forced into because of a demon's brutality.

He had heard the stories.  He was the biological son of a vampire, not the son of his beloved dad, Daniel Holtz.  He scowled angrily at the thought.  He wasn't a demon!  He had come across thousands of demons in this dimension, and he knew enough about them to know that he wasn't a demon at all.  He had a soul, he had feelings, he wasn't evil.  Everything else in this dimension was.

"Are you heading out son?" came his dad's voice from inside the small hut.

He turned and gave his dad a small smile, nodding.

"We're nearly out of water.  I was just about to head down to the water hole," he explained, holding up the bucket that sat at his feet.

Holtz merely nodded, feeling far older than he should have felt.  The hell dimension was wearing on him heavily and he was concerned for his son.  The demons had begun getting more violent of late, and there had been many close calls.  Holt could no longer protect his son, and more often then not, he had relied on Stephen to get him out of trouble.

"I'll be back in an hour dad," Stephen said quietly, breaking Holtz out of his reverie.

"Be careful," Holtz said affectionately.

Stephen grinned and held up the home-made weapon that Holtz had crafted in their first year in Quortoth. 

"Always."

------------------------

Buffy had been walking since the sun had risen that morning, spurred to begin another trek by who knew what.  She couldn't explain why she felt the need to walk in that particular direction, but she knew to trust her instincts.  After several centuries in a hell dimension, her senses were finely tuned in with the evil that lurked.  

In the distance, she could see a small figure moving to what she sensed was a water hole.  For a demon dimension, there seemed to be an abundance of water that seemed to be alright for consumption.  In fact, it was where most of the battles took place.  Demons tried to protect their water supply by attacking any intruders.

Of course, none of the demons ever really counted on being beaten by the tiny blonde girl.  

She watched the figure gather water in a wooden bucket and suddenly tense as though he could sense something else present.  She crept in closer and felt her heart begin to race as the figure came into focus properly.

It wasn't a demon.  It was a human.  From what she could see, it was a boy who looked no older than nineteen.  She rubbed her eyes, fearful that she was just seeing things.  Though why she would see anything now was just beyond her.

She opened her eyes and did a double take.  It was indeed another human, and not only was it another human, his fighting skills were amazing.  He fought with no real technique, no exact style.  He fought to win, taking risky shots and getting hurt for them.  She winced as she saw him fall to the ground and falter there for a moment.

She moved closer, within distance in case it got a little too hairy for the boy.  

Stephen jumped to his feet and kicked the creature back, taking it away from the water supply that it was trying to protect.  He never understood why the demons were so protective of the water, but it made it hard to get a steady supply of it.

The demon stumbled back but quickly regained balance.  Before Stephen could even regroup enough to strike again, the demon struck out at him, sending him crashing to the ground ten feet away.  The creature stepped towards the fallen boy and went to crush him with a large foot, but before Stephen could even roll away, the demon was tackled from the side.

Buffy hadn't even hesitate as she jumped into the fray, punching and kicking the demon with the speed and agility that can only be mastered with centuries of fighting.  Within seconds, she had moved the demon away from the boy, away from the water and had beaten it into submission.  With a home-made axe, she hit it directly in the heart.  The creature cried out in pain and made it final move, sending a large spike from its arm through her stomach.

She fell to her knees, clutching at the wound, the blood seeping through her fingers.  She was loosing blood far too quickly and the world was beginning to go black.  All she saw before the world was swept into darkness was the fading pink of the sky as the sun went down.


	8. Grey

CHAPTER EIGHT: GREY 

Stephen stood shakily, adrenaline pumping through his body.  He dusted the dirt from his clothes and cautiously stepped towards the fallen creature who had saved him.  He swallowed hard, and gently prodded the small body with his bare foot, but she did not stir.

He thought frantically for a moment before coming to a decision that could have been potentially dangerous.  Arranging the water bucket so that it dangled from the crook in his elbow, he lifted the Slayer and held her awkwardly before finding an easier way to carry her.  With a quick glance around him to make sure he wasn't open to any attacks, he rushed home.

His father was, as always, waiting for him on the makeshift porch, sitting on a rickety old chair that Holtz had hand-crafted when Stephen had been only a year old.  

Holtz opened his eyes wearily and jumped to his feet as he saw the silhouette of his son against the darkening sky.  He raced to meet Stephen, looking down at the bundle that was being carried.

He looked at his son with confusion, but his son obviously didn't have any answers for him either.  Holtz's eyes glanced over her body and he took in the bloody shirt and bleeding wound in the girls stomach.

"Bring her inside," he said quietly. 

Stephen nodded and took her into the hut, laying her down on the beds that Holtz had crafted out of what little materials he had been able to find.  He watched the girl carefully, afraid that she would awaken and attack at any moment, his weapon at the ready.

Holtz poured some of the new water into a smaller jug and grabbed a piece of old cloth to begin cleaning the wound on the injured girl.  He lifted the black shirt carefully off the bleeding area and Stephen could only sit back and watch, trying to understand what it was that he was seeing.

"W-what is it?" he asked hesitantly.

Holtz looked up at him, sometimes forgetting that his son was so innocent, so ignorant about the world.  Holtz had told him about girls and women, but Stephen had never seen one for himself.

"A girl.  A human girl," Holtz replied gently.

Stephen tilted his head to the side thoughtfully, regarding the creature that lay prone on his bed.  

"A girl," he whispered to himself.  He swallowed and sat down on his father's bed, only a few feet away from his own.

Holtz hesitated before his next question, not entirely sure as to whether he would offend his son by asking.

"Did you…did you do this to her?" Holtz asked, pointing to the wound.  The bleeding had stopped and Holtz had begun to wash away the excess blood.

Stephen shook his head emphatically.

"It uh…her…it saved me."

"Saved you?"

"Yes.  A Ragnart demon was about to attack, but…this…girl killed it," Stephen explained.  "The demon hurt her."

"She was able to fight?" Holtz asked, incredulously.  

From the size of the girl, he was surprised that she had been able to lift a hand against a Ragnart demon and defeat it.

"It was…magnificent.  I've never seen anything move like her."

Holtz regarded the unconscious girl with unbridled curiousity.  He and Stephen had been in Quortoth for eighteen years and had never once come across another human being.  Every creature had been a demon, evil, many of them extremely difficult to defeat.  

The girls eyes opened suddenly, blinking as though to adjust to her surroundings.  She sat up quickly in bed and jumped to a defensive position.  Holtz stood and quickly put his hands up in a sign of peace.  Stephen stood beside his father, ready to attack the girl if she decided to pounce on his father.

Buffy quickly cast her memory back to the last thing she remembered, and finally recalled saving the boy from certain death.  She dropped her hands to her sides and sat down again, the gash in her stomach making her slightly queasy.  

She looked up at the two men staring at her and felt herself go red under their scrutiny.  It had been over four centuries since she had seen another human, and it was making her uneasy.  The young man's penetrating gaze did nothing for her complexion either.

"Where am I?" she asked quietly.

Holtz touched his cheek thoughtfully and wondered how and why this girl was in Quortoth.  She looked to be no older than twenty, a small slip of a girl who, by all rights shouldn't have been that good at defending herself.

"A dimension called Quortoth," Holtz replied.

She rolled her eyes a little and shook her head.  "Yeah, I know that, but…where in Quortoth.  I've been here for…well, a helluva long time and I've never seen any other humans here before."

Stephen looked a little startled at the girls language.  His father's language was always formal, generally always loving unless Stephen had taken unnecessary risks during a fight.  But Buffy's language was tinged with sarcasm and a cynicism that had been ingrained into her in the last four centuries.  She had given up hope of going home about four lifetimes ago.  She knew reality.

"You're in a hut in the East of Quortoth," Holtz explained.

Buffy nodded and looked between the two men.

"And…who are you guys?  What did you guys do to deserve to come to hell?" she asked.

"We were forced here by a demon," Stephen replied, very defensive of his beloved father.  He hated this dimension as much as the girl obviously did, and the fact that it was his biological father's fault that he and Holtz were there was an issue that lay heavily with him.

Buffy stopped and sighed quietly.  It wouldn't do her any good to pick a fight with the only human interaction she'd had for four hundred years.  

"But who are you?  You have names?"

Holtz held out his hand for her to shake and she regarded it with confusion at first.  Then, as though she had worked out the pieces to a difficult puzzle, she returned the hand shake.

"My name is Daniel Holtz.  This is my son Stephen."

She shook Stephen's hand as well, though he was unfamiliar with the custom and accidentally squeezed a little too hard.  He went to let go but she held onto his hand.  

"Don't squeeze so hard.  Lighten up the pressure by about half and you'll have a pretty decent handshake," she said.

He did as he was told and they shook hands once more.  He took his hand back, surprised by the slight tingling feeling he had on his skin and in his stomach.  He smiled shyly and quickly retreated back to his seat on his father's bed.

"Why are you in Quortoth?" Stephen asked, trying to regulate his breathing. 

Buffy gave him a sad smile and just shook her head.  "It's a long and…complicated story."

"You don't look like someone who deserves to be here," Holtz commented.

"Let's just say that I had a lapse in judgement.  I jumped headfirst, literally, into something I didn't understand, and ended up making an slight mistake.  I ended up here, and I've been here ever since," she explained.

"You don't look to be more than twenty," Holtz said.  "You can't have been here very long."

Buffy rolled her eyes and made herself more comfortable on the makeshift bed, curling her legs up beneath her.  

"Part of some higher plan from the Powers That Be.  I don't age here in this dimension.  Kinda lucky seeing as I don't have to eat anything, but I'm kinda partial to the water here.  There's something to be said about water that you have to fight for.  Makes it taste that much better," Buffy said.

Stephen suddenly narrowed his eyes at her, and as if out of nowhere, he pulled out a wooden cross and shoved it in her face.  She raised her eyebrows at him.

"Problems?"

He stepped back, startled by her very casual demeanour.

"You're not a vampire?"

Buffy shook her head, and without a word, she pulled back the collar of her shirt and lifted the cross so that Stephen could see it. 

"I'm not a vampire."

"But you move like a demon.  I've never seen anything as fast as you are.  And…you don't ever age."

"Four centuries in a hell dimension is kinda bound to leave me with some pretty good fighting skills.  And not to honk my own horn here, but I was pretty darn good before I got stranded here."

Holtz looked horrified by her statement.  "Four centuries?"

Buffy blew out a short breath and nodded.  "Four very long and painful centuries of fighting and making up for my error in judgement."

There was silence for a moment before Stephen looked up curiously.

"What was it?"

Buffy looked up confused.  "Huh?"

"The error?"

Buffy cocked her head to the side and gave a sardonic smile.

"I saved my sister.  And I wouldn't take it back for the world."


	9. Jade

CHAPTER NINE: JADE

She stayed with Stephen and Holtz for nearly a week before the wound in her stomach had completely healed, something that Stephen was highly amazed at.  He didn't understand the differences between himself and this girl and had often been caught staring at her.  The sudden rush of blood to his cheeks had startled him at first, but under Buffy's scrutinising gaze, he had become used to being flushed around her.

Buffy had to admit that staying inside the hut was far better than the land that had been her bed for the last few centuries.  She had never been bothered to set up in one particular area, and the only time she had tried, her efforts had been completely destroyed by a rather large, rather angry demon.

When she was completely healed, she was hesitant to leave.  The complete isolation had very nearly driven her mad, and she knew without a doubt that she didn't want to walk away from the only human contact that she had.  

On the sixth day of her stay, she had resigned herself to the fact that she could no longer impose on the Holtz's generosity and was prepared to leave.

Stephen had looked so completely distraught at the thought of no longer having someone else to talk to that Holtz had offered her a permanent standing in the small hut.  It wasn't much, but it was all he had to offer.  With only a slight amount of hesitation, she had accepted.

Stephen had grinned wildly, an expression that he wasn't entirely familiar with, but had gone with it when he saw Buffy smile back at him.

It was late afternoon when Stephen went to retrieve more water, insisting that Buffy stay at the hut with Holtz.  

"Do you ever regret it?" Holtz asked, breaking the silence that hung between them.

She looked over at him, a peaceful look on her face.  She hadn't felt much peace since she had been thrown in Quortoth, but she was slowly becoming reaccustomed to the feeling.

"Regret what?"

"Coming here?  Saving your sister?" he clarified.

Buffy thought about her answer carefully.  She had often wondered what would have happened if she had have let her sister jump off the tower, and the thought of it made her sick to the stomach, even after all these years.

"I would rather spend a thousand years here than let me my sister spend even an hour in this place," she said.

He was taken aback by the answer.  He could hear the honesty in the Slayer's voice, could tell that the girl was indeed telling the truth.  She knew how to love with her whole heart, even after all these years.

"And you?" Buffy asked.

Holtz looked at her, a little startled.  

"Do I regret coming here?" 

Buffy nodded. 

"I regret that Stephen won't get to see the world.  That all he'll ever know is fighting demons and monsters.  He'll never get to see the few things that made the world a slightly acceptable place," Holtz said.

Buffy nodded, understanding that.  She couldn't imagine growing up in this hell dimension.  She had memories, dim memories, of what the world was meant to be like.  But to have never seen the blue of the sky or the green of the grass, or the hazel of her sisters eyes…that was torture.

------------------------

The heat was sweltering, and in the leather ensemble that had been her uniform for so many centuries was far too constricting.  She couldn't explain how her clothes and weapons were still in tact, though she had had to retire Mr Pointy and had begun fashioning her own stakes so as not to completely ruin Kendra's favoured stake.  

Her crossbow had spots of rust on it, but was otherwise still in good working order.  After so many years of training with Giles and from having to survive purely on herself for centuries, crafting bolts for the crossbow came as almost a second nature to her.  

The dress that she had transformed into a backpack hadn't been worn since the first day in the cave.  It had been unwrapped so many times so that Buffy could read the words in her Watcher's Journal, but other than that, the dress was still completely wearable.

She unwrapped the dress, placing the book and shoes on the floor carefully.  She wriggled out of her leather pants and stripped herself of the black cotton tee.  She ran some water over her front and back, washing the sweat from her body before slipping the once-white dress on.

She heard someone falter behind her and she turned, surprised to see a wide-eyed Stephen standing there, his jaw dropped almost comically.  

He stuttered for a moment, the colour rushing to his cheeks before he ran from the room, trying to understand what had just happened.  He had walked into the room when his father was changing but never before had he considered the human body to be…exquisite.  

The reactions of his body were scaring him, the flush on his face and the sudden rushing of blood to another portion of his body was making him worried.  He had never experienced anything like this before, and it was making him uncomfortable.

He ran out the front door only to very nearly collide with his father.  Holtz put his hands on his son's shoulders to steady the boy, automatically becoming worried.

"What's wrong Stephen?"

His face went a brighter shade of red as he thought back to what he had just walked in on.  Holtz smiled gently and led his son to the two old wooden chairs on the home-made porch.  Stephen sat down, wiggling nervously, beginning to become worried about the state he was in.

"What happened?"

Stephen looked down, suddenly feeling extremely embarrassed even though he wasn't really aware of what had happened.

"I uh…Buffy, she…she was…she was changing," Stephen managed to get out.

"You walked in when she was naked?" Holtz asked gently.  His son was so very innocent, so ignorant about these things.  He had never felt the need to explain love and sex to Stephen, he had thought it cruel to even try to explain something that his son may never experience.  

"Dad, I don't understand what's happening to me.  I mean…whenever I see her…it's like…my heart starts beating faster and…my…" he gestured to his crotch and Holtz managed to hold in a slight chuckle.  "It's not funny.  I…I think I'm sick."

Holtz shook his head slightly and gave his son's hand a fatherly squeeze.

"You're not sick Stephen.  You're…you're reacting in a perfectly normal way for a young man who's attracted to a beautiful woman."

Stephen regarded his father with curiousity.

"Attracted?"

Holtz took a deep breath and held back a smile as he began to explain to his son the world of love and sex and relationships, trying his best to explain the reactions that Stephen was having.  

An hour later, Stephen was still sitting wide-eyed and anxious.  His father had just spoken of a completely new world of emotions that he had never known existed.  He knew of love of course, for he loved his father dearly.  But attraction and laughter and freedom and sexuality seemed to be so new.

He heard Buffy come out the door, deliberately loud to give the Holtz men time to regroup after their discussion.  She would have walked out earlier but she had heard how curious Stephen had been, firing questions to his father in no particular order.  It had seemed so private, so personal that she hadn't even listened to the entire conversation.

When Stephen saw her, his cheeks which had finally returned to their tanned brown, flamed up to a brighter red.  He averted his gaze but Buffy just smiled and sat in third seat beside Holtz.  

Her white dress came to mid thigh, longer than what she had worn in high school, but far more revealing than she was used to here in Quortoth.  While she had been living off the land, she would have taken a dip in the ponds to cool herself off rather than don the dress, but it just seemed right to put the dress on.

She sat elegantly and couldn't help but notice the way that Stephen ran his eyes over her body appreciatively.  She also couldn't help but feel slightly like some sort of science experiment.  She knew that if they had been in LA, he wouldn't have given her a second thought.  But here in Quortoth, where she was the first and only girl in the dimension, she knew he had the right to be curious.

She stifled a smile at the thought of what Stephen would have done if she hadn't been female.  His reaction to seeing another human had been rather interesting and if she had been a male, she wondered if the fascination would still be there.

Holtz saw the smile on Buffy's face and thought it was for completely different reasons.  He couldn't help but wonder what the girl who had entered their lives really was.  She hadn't really explained how she had saved her sister or why she had needed to.  She had never explained her fighting skills, except for the survival instinct that was very obviously ingrained in all Quortoth dwellers.

Then again, Holtz couldn't really judge her for not opening up to them with the truth about why she was in Quortoth.  He hadn't explained Angelus and his needed for vengeance, for justice.  Although, he had a feeling if he told the young woman his son was so interested in, she would probably understand.  

Holtz smiled again and thought, not for the first time, that things would be interesting from now on.


	10. Violet

CHAPTER TEN: VIOLET

(Author's Note: I've re-uploaded chapters seven through nine cos I changed Stephen's age.  He was eighteen and a half [approx] when he and Buffy first met, so he's now twenty.  Go with it, please!)

It was over a year and a half after Buffy had moved in with Daniel and Stephen that anything remotely interesting happened between Buffy and the younger Holtz.  They had been sparring outside as the sun had been setting, their weapons on the ground within arms reach if they needed them`for a real fight.

Buffy had been training Stephen on the finer points of fighting, brushing up on the boys technique.  She was surprised by his speed and flexibility.  She had heard the story of Stephen's conception, two vampires producing a human child.

She had been shocked but hadn't let it show.  She had to admit that her first thoughts had been of Angel, but she had dismissed that thought immediately.  Holtz had explained to her that his family had been massacred by the demon and, judging from Holtz's age, Angel would have had his soul by the time he would have produced children.

She had to wonder, however, about who the vampire was that had been able to produce a child in the human way.  She wouldn't ask though, sensing it was a sore point for Stephen, and seeing as he never pushed her for details about her life, she wasn't about to push for details about him.

Holtz was nowhere in sight, not particularly liking the way that Buffy and Stephen sparred together.  There was no real malice, though there was always violence.  They were quick and accurate and after nearly a year, Stephen was almost able to take the Slayer down.  Almost.

When they had first begun, his main disadvantage was being distracted by Buffy's chattering.  She would talk casually or fling insults or suggestions to him mid-battle, not even taking more breath as she did so.  It took nearly six months before he was able to properly retort back to her, the two of them slinging barbs and jokes back and forth.

By about the tenth month, Buffy had taken the teasing to another level and had started dropping sexual innuendos into their fighting to make him lose concentration.  It had taken another months before he was used to it and slinging back the insults and innuendos as good as he got.  Of course, he still had a fair way to go, but he had discovered nearly everything about sex just from their fighting.

The way they moved and fought was an intricate dance, one that Buffy had been missing for centuries.  The fights between the demons had been business, pure and simple.  They had been protecting their property and had engaged in a battle to do just that.  They had never fought for fun, and she had been craving a good all out fight that lasted for hours.

When Stephen was properly trained in sparring and in the puns, Buffy was thrilled.  It reminded her sorely of home though, the endless hours of sparring she had done with Giles, the shadow boxing that Spike had managed to talk her into several times and of course the all-out sparring she and Angel had done.  

"Come on Buffy, sometime this year.  I'm growin' old here," Stephen taunted, the back of his fist striking her left cheek.  He took a second to flip his long hair out of his face while Buffy quickly regained her balance.

She just grinned at him and gave him a speculative look up and down.  "Well, part of you is certainly growing."

He glared at her, his already flushed face becoming a little brighter.  That was his one weakness.  He hated when she pointed out that he usually always got hard during their sparring sessions.  It was hard not to when he watched her fight.  In tight leather pants and a tight tee-shirt he was surprised that he even had a modicum of control over himself.

He was twenty now, and although nothing had occurred between them as yet, he was finding himself more and more in love with her each day.  He had begun dreaming about her more often, though there wasn't a day that had gone by when he hadn't thought about her before drifting off to sleep.  The dreams had been becoming more vivid of late and he had woken up hard in the mornings.  He had switched from bathing in the evenings to washing himself in the mornings.  Neither Buffy nor Holtz had mentioned it, though both had noticed.

Holtz was surprised by the time the two had taken to become closer.  His son either had a lot of self-control or was so clueless about how to begin something with someone as confident and cocky as Buffy Summers and thus hadn't even tried.  

Buffy got in a quick kick to Stephen's chest, winding him a little.  He stumbled backwards, falling onto his backside but quickly back-flipping and bouncing on his feet.  He faked left and ducked under Buffy's punch, grabbing her by the waist and throwing her to the ground in a move that surprised them both.  Buffy clutched at Stephen's wrist, and he came tumbling down on top of her, their bodies crashing together in a jumble of limbs and skin.

Stephen laughed a little and looked down at his opponent, both of them breathing hard and sweating terribly.  His heart caught in his throat, something he wasn't unfamiliar with after a year and a half of living with the girl that he dreamt of nightly.

Buffy had been hesitant about her feelings towards Stephen.  He was impossible not to like, not only because there were no other options, but because there was something so completely endearing in his innocence regarding all things female.  She had come to care about him over the last year and a half and at some point, though she couldn't have told you when, she had felt herself seeing him in a new light.

He had begun to carry himself more confidently, had begun showing an assertiveness that she hadn't known existed in him.  His attitude slowly became a mixture of Buffy's and Holtz's, a lethal combination for anything that tried to destroy their home.  

She remembered the first time the butterflies had started within her stomach.  Holtz had been fixing one of the chairs at the time and Buffy had been happily watching, offering her help only to be gently turned down.  Holtz was beginning to slow down in his actions and had found himself as the recipient of many offers of help from his son and from Buffy as well.  He hated accepting help unless absolutely necessary, and by silent agreement, Buffy and Stephen usually left him alone unless they felt it imperative to help the aging man.

Stephen had gone to fetch more water and when he had returned, he had been shirtless and saturated, water droplets sliding down his well-toned chest.  She had stared at him for a moment before looking away, flushed.  Stephen had grinned, finally glad to be able to get her at her own game.  After that, he had often sparred with her in only his pants made from the raw-hide from the demons he killed.  

He hadn't been wearing a shirt when he had managed to wrestle Buffy to the ground, and her hands were involuntarily drawn to his sweat covered chest.  She trailed her finger across his muscles, savouring the feel.  It had been centuries since she had made love with someone and the feeling of Stephen's hands on her body was driving her slowly insane.

He lifted his hand gently and tucked a strand of her unruly hair behind her ear, their faces only an inch apart.  He looked hesitantly into her eyes but found the same desire looking back at him.  Tentatively he leant down and brushed his lips with hers, still not entirely certain about what he was doing.

Buffy noticed his uncertainty and slowly increased the pressure between them, finally coaxing Stephen's mouth apart.  Stephen felt his heart beginning to pound in his chest even more than usual.  He had thought that the feelings he had felt when he wasn't touching her were as far as his body could handle, but with one hand in her hair and the other resting on her hips as their tongues danced and duelled, he knew he had been wrong.


	11. Silver

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SILVER

It had been a week, and the newly coupled Buffy and Stephen had yet to take things to the next level, though the sexual tension during their sparring had taken on a new twist.  In between punches and kicks, one of them would grab the other and pull them into a kiss, sometimes violent or soft depending on the mood.  The kiss would last for a minute until one of them remembered they were meant to be sparring and would shove them away and continue with their dance.

When Stephen had excitedly told Holtz about their first kiss the week before, Holtz had smiled indulgently at his son but had worried about the logistics of this relationship.  Stephen was innocent when it came to girls, though his sense of humour had become less naïve, something for which Holtz couldn't help but feel extremely grateful for.

Before Buffy had come along, Stephen had been sullen and introspective, a smile was something rare in itself and laughter hadn't been had since Stephen had been a toddler.  Now, he was laughing, joking and falling desperately in love.

But Buffy would never age.  He would grow old and she would be eternally twenty in this hell dimension.  The fact that Stephen had even been able to find love was a miracle in itself, but to find it with someone who he couldn't grow old with was disappointing.

He wouldn't stop their relationship though.  Couldn't stop it really.  

Holtz was, however, brought up in a world where men were gentlemen.  And when he saw the way his son was looking at Buffy, he knew that things were about to take a step up, and, by rights, he couldn't allow that to happen if the two weren't married.

He was thus surprised when his son had come up to him, a smile a mile wide on his face, bursting with excitement.

"You look thoroughly pleased with yourself," Holtz said, a gentle smile on his face.

If possible, Stephen's grin only became larger.

"It's just…I never knew I could feel like this," Stephen said.  "It's like…like my hearts about to burst through my chest at any second and…and I can't help smiling and laughing."

"She's been good for you son," Holtz replied.

"She has.  And…I love her dad.  More than I thought was possible.  I mean…you told me all about Caroline, how much you loved her.  I think…I can finally understand now.  And I want what you and your wife had.  I want to marry her," Stephen said, kneeling in front of his father, their hands clutched together.

Holtz swallowed hard.  If he said it wasn't possible, he risked the chance of losing his son.  If he said yes, he risked having his son's heart broken when he aged and his wife didn't.  

Stephen saw the hesitation written on his father's face and only became more determined.

"Dad, I know that she and I can't grow old together but…but we can share what time we have together.  We can be happy together.  We _are_ happy together."

Holtz smiled and patted his son's hand.  "I know you are.  I can see it in your eyes.  You were meant to be happy.  I just wish it wasn't here."

"If it wasn't here, I would never have met Buffy.  I love her dad.  We've spoken about it for hours on end and…we want you to marry us," he implored.

Holtz sighed but finally nodded, knowing he could not refuse his son anything, especially not something as important as love.

------------------------

Buffy smiled as she saw him enter the small bedroom.  The grin on Stephen's face told her the answer to the question she had been about to ask and she leapt to her feet, hugging her fiancée tightly.

"He said yes?" she whispered.

He just grinned and swung her off the ground, holding her tightly.

"That's fantastic!" 

He kissed her passionately, getting lost in the feel of her.  Their hearts increased pace and it seemed as though the entire world slipped away from them.  Of course, they were the only people in this dimension, not including Holtz.  But, Buffy knew the truth about death.  Holtz was close to dying, and they would soon be by themselves.

Stephen would grow old and die and she would still be stuck in Quortoth, alone for eternity.

Tears threatened to well up at the thought, but she quickly dismissed it, and continued to get lost in the feel of her soon-to-be husband's arms. 

------------------------

Holtz stood in front of the couple, who, for all intents and purposes were lost in each others eyes.  He smiled at the sight of them, thankful that at least his son would be well looked after when Holtz himself could no longer take on that role.  

"Do you promise to love and cherish each other, forsaking all others, for as long as you both shall live?" Holtz asked.

A single tear fell down Buffy's cheek.  She had never imagined ever getting married, even when she had been in Sunnydale.  As a Slayer, her life expectancy was meant to be extremely limited.  But, not only had she been alive for over four hundred years, she was in love and about to get married.  She smiled and bit her lip to keep from crying.

"I do," they replied simultaneously.   Stephen squeezed Buffy's hand and a tear fell from his own eyes.  Holtz nodded approvingly and gave a small smile when his son stepped forward and gently kissed his new wife.  

Later that evening, Holtz was in a self-inflicted exile on the front porch, letting Stephen and his wife have full control of the house.  He could hear laughter and giggling from inside and he smiled approvingly.  The sound of his son laughing was worth whatever might happen in the future.  And perhaps, miracles could happen after all.

------------------------

The young couple had fallen asleep, wrapped in each others arms, smiles on their faces, completely content in what they had become.  They had been asleep for nearly three hours when Buffy heard a slight creak within the house.  It wasn't altogether unusual, and she thought it might have been Holtz, rejoining them inside to avoid the harsh sunlight of the mornings, but she could hear his steady snoring coming from outside.

She gently extricated herself from Stephen's arms, kissing his forehead lightly.  She grabbed her crossbow from beside the bed and slipped into the white dress that had been discarded on the floor beside the bed the night before.

With the crossbow at the ready she quietly left the room, wondering what demon would dare enter the house that most demons recognised could only lead to trouble.  She was about to shoot when she sensed that even though someone was in the room with her, she wasn't in trouble.

The small demon stepped forward out of the shadows and Buffy lowered the crossbow, sighing wearily.

"You again."

"Yeah me again," he replied.

"It's been a while.  Four centuries at least unless I'm mistaken.  That's a helluva long time for a test."

"Well, nearly four and a half if you're gonna be picky."

"Cut the crap Whistler," she said testily.  "You just interrupted my wedding night, so I'm really not in the mood to do this right now."

"Sheesh, you'd think you'd be less grouchy.  I mean, you finally get laid after four and a half centuries and you're still crabby."

She just glared at him and moved forward threateningly.

"You remember how I almost pummelled you when we met the first time?  Well, I've had four hundred years to perfect my fighting skills.  Don't piss me off," she said.

He held his hands up in a show of surrender and she sighed before backing down.

"I'm assuming you have a message for me."

Whistler grinned.

"Good guess.  You finally figured it out kid," he said, a smile on his face.

"Figured what out?" 

"The Circle of Three," he replied.

Her eyes widened.  She hadn't even remembered him mentioning it until he had reminded her then.  Of course, after four centuries, she had given up any and all hope of actually working out what the Circle of Three actually was.

"What…you mean…Stephen, Daniel and I are a Circle of Three," she said.  "So…if that's my ticket out of here, why hasn't it happened before now?  Why take nearly two years to come here."

Whistlers smile suddenly fell and Buffy noticed it immediately.

"What?  You stopped smiling."

"Daniel's not part of it.  He can't go back."

"What?  Why?" she asked, her voice panicked and rising in pitch.

"His time's up kid.  He's not gonna wake up tomorrow.  But you and the boy get to go back," Whistler explained.

She swallowed hard.  He had given her the gift she had wanted for centuries, but it came with a price that she wasn't willing to pay.  Her father-in-law.

"If he can't go back with us then forget it.  You tell the Powers that he's needed back there with us.  He belongs with us," she said, tears coming to her eyes.

Whistler just shook his head sadly.

"They can't.  He's old Buffy.  He's nearly eighty-five.  He's had a long life.  But he's happy now.  He's seen his son fall in love and get married.  His life is finished.  He got his revenge.  He got more revenge than he knows.  Taking away the two people that mean the most to the vampire who massacred his family."

Buffy's heart fell to the floor.  She had always had a niggling thought that Stephen's vampiric father was Angel, but Whistler had just confirmed it.  It didn't make sense though.  Angel would have had a soul by the time that Holtz's family died.

Whistler shook his head sympathetically.  "It's not as simple as that kid.  Holtz found a demon who could transport him through time.  He'd been trying to kill Angelus during the eighteenth century, before Angel got cursed by the Romany."

"So Stephen is Angel's son?"

"Yeah.  He is."

Things fell a little more into place.  Stephen had Angel's eyes.  The hair colour was the same, though Stephen hadn't had the luxury of hair gel to keep it from being unruly.  She felt her heart sink.  Not once when she had been with Stephen had she even thought of her love for Angel.  But…had she, subconsciously, fallen for Stephen as an Angel substitute.

"You love him because of who he is, not cos of who his father is," Whistler said gently.

She felt a little better about that.  She couldn't even begin to imagine that conversation with Stephen when he found out about her connection with his biological father.  She could only imagine that fists would be involved.

Buffy swallowed hard and closed her eyes, trying to think.

"So now what?" she asked.

Whistler touched her shoulder gently and knelt in front of her.

"Now, you're going to go home.  Next week.  You and Stephen can go back.  There's a ritual that you'll need to perform, but after that, you'll be free to go."

"And Daniel?  What about him?" 

"He won't make it through the night."

Another tear fell from her eyes and suddenly a thought came into her mind.  

"If Daniel's going to die…how can there be a Circle of Three?"

Whistler grinned at that.

"You and Steve and your baby makes three."

Buffy swallowed hard.  This was far too much to try and take in at once.  

"A baby?"

"S'what happens when you don't use protection," Whistler reminded her.

She felt dizzy and was thankful that there was a chair directly behind her.  She sat on it gingerly and put a hand to her head, trying to make the world stop spinning.

"And this non-aging thing I've got going here…that stops right?  Once I'm back I'll have a normal life?" she asked.

Whistler nodded with a small shrug.  "As normal as a Slayer can get, yeah."

"Uh…what's the ritual?  How do I perform it?" she asked.

Whistler reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.  There were words in a foreign language on it that made no sense to her.  She took it from him and looked at it curiously.

"Basically it says that the Circle of Three has the Power to open the gates.  You hafta sprinkle a bit of your blood and Stephen's onto the ground.  A portal will open and you go through it."

"And we'll come out where?" she asked.

Whistler smirked and gestured towards the bedroom where Stephen was still sleeping.

"That kid's got people trying to open portals to get him outta this hellhole.  The attempts are helping you out a bit, but it means that the portal will open there."

"And where's that?"

"Hyperion Hotel," Whistler replied.

Buffy cast her mind back, trying desperately to remember why that name was familiar.  Of course, it all came back to Angel.  It was Angel's Hotel.

"Just a warning kid," Whistler said as he strode to the front door.  "Your hubby wants justice for what Angelus did to his dad's family.  You gotta decide which side of the fight you're on."


	12. Lime

CHAPTER TWELVE: LIME

She crept back into the bed, her thoughts jumbled and moving at a pace far too fast for her to really decipher anything.  Stephen was Angel's son.  Holtz had been talking to her for two years about the demon who had killed his family, and Buffy had wished that she could exact the vengeance that Holtz so desperately wanted.

The question was, was she willing to go through with the thoughts of killing the evil vampire that had killed Holtz's family.  Angel was different now.  He had a soul.  

The thoughts about how Angelus had killed Holtz's family though stuck with her.  She had heard the tales.  Had heard how Holtz's wife Caroline had been raped and beaten and finally drained by the two vampires who had been able to produce a child together.  She had heard how Holtz's little girl Sarah, who couldn't have been more than eight years old, had been turned so that her father would have to kill her by throwing her outside into the sun.  

It was the cruellest thing she had ever heard, and listening to a victim of Angelus' violence, she had wanted to do whatever she could to eradicate this vampire that had caused so much pain.  The problem was, Angel was suffering for the sis of Angelus.  She knew first-hand that Angel and Angelus were two very different creatures.

Plus, Holtz had always spoken of how Angelus was now suffering because Holtz had taken his son away from him.  It seemed fitting for Holtz to take Angel's family seeing aas Angelus had taken Holtz's.  She couldn't understand why Holtz had taken such good care of Stephen though.  Perhaps it was just in case they had ever found a way out of Quortoth.  There was no worse punishment than having your child call someone else 'dad'.

Stephen shifted in his sleep, automatically readjusting himself on the narrow bed to accommodate for Buffy even though they had never before been in the same bed.  She snuggled close to him, somewhat comforted by the warmth of his arms.  

Then there was the other bombshells that Whistler had dropped.  Holtz wouldn't be waking up in the morning.  She was going to have a child, something else she had never thought she would ever get because of her Slayer status and then her eternity in hell.  It seemed strange that she not only had managed to outlive every single Slayer, but she had also married and was about to have a child with a wonderful man that she loved and that loved her.  The world worked in strange ways.

After another hour of thoughts that generated no answers whatsoever, she knew she wouldn't be getting anymore sleep that night.  She gently pulled out of Stephen's grasp once more and made her way to the front porch where Holtz was still peacefully sleeping.  She touched his shoulder, immediately alerting him to her presence.

He squinted in the half-light and smiled at her, the smile fading when he saw her tears.

"Buffy.  What's wrong?" 

She shrugged and knelt in front of him, burying her face in his lap.  He put his hands on her head, running his hands through her hair affectionately. 

"I just wanted to talk to you," she explained.

"Is it Stephen?  There's nothing wrong is there?  You two seemed to be getting along so well before I dozed off," Holtz said quietly.

"Things with Stephen are fine.  More than fine actually," she said, managing to smile at the memory.  "It's just…you never told me that Stephen's father was Angelus." 

Holtz's eyes narrowed. 

"Stephen told you that?"

She shook her head.  "No.  He didn't.  It doesn't matter how I found out, but…you could have trusted me with this."

"I…I didn't think it mattered.  Do you know Angelus?"

She sniffed back tears and nodded, ducking her head.  She was thoroughly ashamed at having to admit such an intimate moment of her life with her brand new father-in-law on her wedding night.

"Angel and I…we were lovers.  When I was seventeen," she said.

Holtz's eyes flew open and Buffy was sure that he would let go of her hands in disgust, but his grip tightened, but not threateningly.

"You loved this creature?"

She nodded and wiped her tears from her eyes.

"I fell in love with him before I knew who…what he was.  I was sixteen when I met him, I…I didn't know any better.  He…he was good to me.  He loved me, and…and I didn't know how cruel he was without the soul.  Not until a year later," she explained.

"What happened a year later?"

"He lost his soul.  The gypsies who cursed him put a loophole in the curse.  If he managed to be perfectly happy, even for a moment, he would lose his soul.  And…when he and I…when we…when we made love, he lost his soul.  He tormented me for months, killed several of my friends and tried to end the world.  But…I killed him.  His soul was restored to him just before I stuck a sword through him.  The…The Powers That Be brought him back cos…he helps people.  In L.A.  He's trying to make up for what he did." 

"He can never make up for what he did to my family," Holtz said vehemently.

"I know," she whispered, looking up at him, eyes filled with tears and sincerity.  "He can never make up for what he did to anyone and I didn't see that until I heard what he did to your family.  That's why you took Stephen."

Holtz nodded and gently wiped a tear from Buffy's eyes.  She gave him a small smile, grateful that she hadn't been pushed away after her confession of loving the creature that had destroyed his family.

"Do you…do you still have feelings for him?" Holtz asked.

She shook her head automatically.  Four hundred years had certainly given her a lot of perspective.  She had hated the creature that killed Holtz's family and the fact that it was Angel did nothing to deter that hatred. 

"I love Stephen, Daniel.  With all that I am, I love him," she assured him, knowing that it was true in her heart.  When she looked at Stephen, she could feel her heart bursting with love and devotion.  She could remember the feelings that came with Angel.  There was love of course, but there was also a lingering heaviness that had made their relationship end in a bad place.

"If…if you somehow find a way back to your dimension, could you…could you extract the vengeance that you swore you would do?" he asked.

She remembered the many conversations they had had where Buffy would tell him of her wish to make the creature pay for his sins.  She swallowed hard but knew that even though she had once loved Angel, she now hated what he had done.  She hated him with every fibre of her being, and she knew that he had to be eliminated so that no other families could ever be hurt as Holtz's had been hurt.

"I could."

Holtz nodded and tucked a strand of Buffy's hair behind her ears.

"Good girl."

She smiled and kissed his hand.

"I don't want you to kill him," Holtz said quietly, causing Buffy to jerk her head upwards in confusion, a questioning look written clearly in her eyes.

"Let the creature live.  Don't let Stephen destroy him either.  Let the creature live knowing that not only did he lose his son, but he has forever lost his lover as well," Holtz explained.

She was hesitant, but finally nodded.  She had to admit that she didn't particularly wish to kill Angel, though if Holtz had requested it, she would have granted a dying man a final request.

Holtz sighed and leant back in his chair tiredly.

"You should come inside Daniel," she said quietly.

He just smiled at her and touched her face affectionately.

"I wish to stay out here.  See one last sunrise before I die."

"You're not going to die Daniel.  Not today," she said, even though the tears in her eyes told her that she knew better than that.

He smiled indulgently and shook his head.

"I'm an old man.  And I have seen my son do all that he was meant to do," Holtz whispered.  "Will you…will you tell him I love him?" 

She nodded and tried to keep from sobbing.  Holtz looked over Buffy's head and saw the sun coming over the horizon.  In the early hours of the morning, he could almost pretend to be back in England again, just watching the sunrise, pretending that that was the only reason the sky was red.  

Holtz closed his eyes and Buffy stood to kiss the man's forehead.  His head tilted forward and she knew that he would never open his eyes again.


	13. Fuchsia

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FUCHSIA

There were tears on the morning that would have otherwise been a happy occasion.  Stephen was grief-stricken.  For someone who had been killing demons for nearly fifteen years, he was certainly ignorant when it came to death.  Holtz's death hit him incredibly hard and for nearly two days straight, all he could do was sob in Buffy's arms.

She would stroke his back and his hair gently, letting him get out all of his sadness and his frustrations.  She would kiss him gently and allow him to cling to her.  She relayed Holtz's message to her new husband, tears in her eyes and her heart in her throat.

They cried together and worked as a team to bury Holtz just beside their small hut, a marker placed above the gravesite.  The hut wasn't the same without his quiet presence there any longer.  

Buffy waited until the third day before she told Stephen of what Whistler had said.

"Go back?  To L.A?" he asked.

She nodded, her heart in her throat.  There was nothing more that she wanted in this world than to be able to go back to her home and see her friends and her sister once more.

Stephen was hesitant for a moment, but finally his eyes hardened and Buffy's heart sank.  He didn't want to go back.

"We'll go," he said, malice in his voice.  The tone scared her.  She hadn't heard him speak like that for months now, and she was immediately on guard.

"Stephen?" she whispered.

He smiled at her and pulled her in for a gentle kiss.

"I can kill the creature who murdered my father's family.  Make him pay for what he did," Stephen said, his voice low and dangerous.

Buffy took Stephen's hands in her own.

"Your dad told me about Angelus," Buffy said.  It wasn't entirely a lie.  Holtz had spoken about Angelus.  Somehow, she was even more nervous about bringing Angel up with Stephen than she had been bringing it up with Holtz.

"He's a murderer.  God gave me to dad so I could be free of him," Stephen said quietly.

Buffy kissed her husbands hands and gently took his face so he could look at her.

"Do you trust me?" she whispered.

He looked surprised at her question.

"With my life."

She smiled and kissed him again.

"Then I have to tell you something and I need you to believe me," she said quietly.

"Of course," he replied.

She breathed in deeply and tried to think about her worse before launching into a possibly painful topic.

She explained the conversation she had had with Holtz the morning he had passed away.  She explained how Holtz had requested that they not kill Angel so that Holtz's revenge could be more permanent.  Then she launched into what her friends had always labelled the ' Buffy and Angel' saga.

He had made to let go of her hands when she had told him about falling in love with Angel, but she refused to let his hands go.  He had struggled for a moment but had given in and continued to listen to her.  He had tried interrupting several times but each time, he had found himself being silenced with a gentle finger to the lips.

There were tears on his face by the time she had finished her explanations and eventually Stephen nodded.

"I don't agree, but I will honour his wishes," he whispered.

Buffy smiled and kissed him gently, leading him back inside the hut to their room.  They only had four more days until they could do the ritual, and for those days, they spoke and made love, both of them wishing that they could remain in Quortoth in their own private world, while at the same time wanting to be away from the hell dimension.

------------------------

On the sixth day, they came across trouble at their usual water hole.  Most of the demons had learnt to stay away from the hole in the last two years, but there were always new demons to the area that didn't realise that they would be in a world of trouble for going near the Holtz's water supply.

It had been near mid-day, twenty minutes after the newly weds had made themselves get out of bed.  Buffy still hadn't told Stephen of the pregnancy, but she didn't wish to say anything in case Whistler had been wrong, or in case anything went wrong when they went through the portal.  She sincerely hoped that there wouldn't be any problems, but until she could be sure, he kept the news to herself.

There hadn't been a sound in the air when they had made their trip to the hole, going for sentimental reasons as well as a practicality.  They hadn't quiet been out of water, there would have been enough to tide them over until the portal opened, but they both wished to go one last time.

They had taken their weapons, though in the last two years there had only been six fights over the water.  They hadn't expected there to be any trouble, but that was usually when trouble happened.

Buffy had shouldered her crossbow, Stephen had a crude sword in his free hand, and the couple made their way to the water hole hand-in-hand.  They had gathered water in the nearly worn-out bucket that Holtz had fashioned in the first year.  It was still in surprisingly good condition, especially seeing as Stephen had often brandished it as a weapon when he had been hard-pressed in fights.

They were about to head back when they heard a crackling in the air.  Buffy had taught Stephen how to sense the air changing, and with his already advanced hearing that seemed to be a trait he had picked up from his biological parents, he was a natural at telling when things were about to become uncomfortable.  Buffy put the bucket of water to one side and turned, her face suddenly going white.

The creature that stood before them was as tall as it was wide.  It towered above Buffy, though with her diminutive height, that wasn't a hard feat.  The creature stood at nearly six feet and was holding a weapon that looked to be incredibly advanced.

Most of the demons and creatures that Buffy had fought in the last four centuries had only been holding their natural weapons; fists, fangs, skewers, tails, horns and the like.  This creature was holding something that resembled an automatic weapon.  

Buffy wasn't half-wrong in her guess of it being automatic when the creature fired a round of shots in quick succession.

Both Buffy and Stephen ducked and dodged quickly, Buffy having the advantage of speed and size over her husband.  She tackled him to the ground, covering his body with hers.  She couldn't die here, but her husband certainly could.

They simultaneously rolled and jumped to their feet, looking for all the world as though they had been fighting side-by-side for the last fifty years, even though it hadn't even been two.  They fought well together, each of them knowing and understanding the others strengths and weaknesses.  

Stephen surged forward, his sword at the ready, aiming at where the creatures heart should have been, but the creature looked as tough the blow to its chest had done nothing at all.  Buffy's eyes widened in panic and she immediately rushed forward in a diversionary tactic, trying to keep the creatures eyes aimed at her, rather than on Stephen.

She grabbed the creature by its tail, holding it tightly even as it tried to shake her off.  She grabbed her hand-made dagger from the inside of her jacket where Mr Pointy usually lived and drove the metal into the top of the creatures tail.  It screeched loudly and tried once more to shake her off.

She clung on tightly and launched herself into the air, suddenly finding herself on the creatures back, holding onto its scales as a grip.  She thrust her dagger into its back and winced when it screeched once more.  The creature doubled over when she thrust the dagger once more.  Stephen saw his chance for a facial attack while it was so close to the ground and jumped at the opportunity.  

His sword thrust into the creatures left eye and Stephen quickly pulled his sword out to do the same to the left eye.  The creature stumbled blindly, only just missing Stephen as he threw himself into a forward roll to avoid being crushed.  

"Stephen!" Buffy yelled.

Stephen turned and knew automatically what Buffy wanted of him.  He threw his sword up to her, his wife catching it deftly and slitting the creatures throat while it clutched at its eyes in agony.  The creature fell to the ground, bleeding profusely.  It rolled onto its back and discarded its weapon on the side.  After several more sword thrusts from Buffy, the creature stilled.

Stephen grinned at her and she handed him his sword.

"Nice work on the eyes," she complimented.

"And you with the back-stabbing," he replied.

She grinned and stepped away from the dead creature.  She moved to its weapon and picked it up cautiously, almost expecting it to explode the second she touched it.

It seemed to be perfectly safe and she shifted it in her hands.  It was extremely light and in the shape of a gun with three barrels.  It had an armband around it and an easy trigger-mechanism.

"What is it?" Stephen asked curiously, peering over her shoulder.

"It looks like a gun," she replied.

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion and he took it from her.

"A gun?"

He aimed it at her and she quickly brought his arm down.  

"You trying to kill me?  This thing's dangerous.  It looks like it could do some serious damage," she explained.

Stephen grinned at her and she smiled back.  

"Guess that makes it my new toy," he said.

She laughed and shook her head.  "Bys and their toys.  Come on, we should get back before it gets too dark."

He grinned again and helped her carry the water back to their hut.

------------------------

Inside, he regarded the new weapon curiously.  He turned it every-which-way in his hands, careful to not point the barrels at himself or at Buffy.

Buffy sat beside him and looked at it curiously.

"That woulda been cool on patrol.  You could probably shoot stakes from the barrels," she said.

He looked at her with eyebrows raised and she just rolled her eyes in return.  She stood up and retrieved her favoured stake from underneath the bed where she kept the stake and Giles' journal and her shoes.  She threw Stephen the stake from behind, her husband catching it without a warning and without even looking.

He loaded it into the weapon and stood up, taking aim.

"Hey, take it outside.  You'll break something," Buffy cautioned.

Stephen just rolled his eyes, but complied with her wishes, Buffy following him, wanting to see the type of damage the weapon could do with a stake in its barrel.

Stephen aimed carefully at the tree stump that lay thirty feet away from the hut.  It was a little hard to see in the coming darkness, but he had learned to fight in the dark, so shotting a target shouldn't have been too much trouble.

He shot and watched in amazement as the stake not only hit its target but managed to obliterate the stump into smaller pieces.  Buffy's eyes widened and they just looked at each other before racing to what had been the tree stump and looking at it.

"That things got some serious force behind it," Buffy commented, picking up her stake among the other bits of wood.

"S' fun too," he added.

Buffy grinned and pocketed the stake.

"You wanna shoot more stuff, then you're gonna hafta make your own stakes.  We've kinda got the wood for it now as well," she said with a smile.

They picked up the shards of wood, taking the bigger pieces back to the hut and grabbing the carving tools that Holtz had made the house from and methodically whittled several stakes.

"I can't wait to try this on Angelus," Stephen said with a grin.

Buffy smiled at him cautiously.  He had said he wouldn't kill Angelus, but that he would attack and make his identity known to his biological father.  Buffy had agreed to it, and had been willing to make herself known to her ex-lover as well.  She wasn't looking forward to the confrontation, but something told her that it wasn't going to end the way that anyone imagined it would.


	14. Maroon

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MAROON

They spent the rest of the evening and the better part of the dark hours of the morning preparing to leave.  Buffy had wrapped her few possessions back into the white dress that had acted as a backpack for the last few centuries while Connor gathered what weapons he could carry, strapping his latest weapon to his arm.  

He grabbed his string of trophies from the demons he had killed, throwing it over his head and under one arm like a sash.  Buffy grimaced when she saw him sling it over his head, hating that he always took parts of the dead demons as a prize.

"You are so gross," she said, a smile on her face.

He grinned back and kissed her deeply.  "Yeah, but you love me for it."

"I'd almost forgotten," she teased, getting lost in the feel of his lips and hands.

The sun was coming over the horizon, and they had agreed to perform the ritual as soon as they could read the writing on the paper properly.  They were sitting outside their hut, facing each other, both of them cross-legged with serious expressions on their faces.

Buffy's heart was pounding in her chest, nervous that the spell wouldn't take of that something would go wrong and she'd be stuck in Quortoth for the rest of eternity.  Or even worse, Stephen would be stuck and she would be home free.  Whistler had made it clear that there was no way in or out of Quortoth except for the Circle of Three and the Key at the right time of Alignment.

Stephen squeezed Buffy's hands encouragingly.

"It'll be fine.  We're going to do this, and we're gonna get out of here.  We're gonna kick Angelus' ass and you're gonna get to see you're sister again," he assured her.

She nodded, still nervous.  He just squeezed her hands harder and kissed her gently.

"You know I love you, right?" he asked.

She smiled and nodded, barely managing to keep her tears at bay.

"I love you too," she whispered.

"No matter what happens Buffy.  We're gonna be together.  Always."

She looked at him curiously, wondering what had brought this on.

"You're not worried are you?  About going there?  I mean…it's not gonna be easy, not by a long shot.  It's gonna take a lot of time, probably a lot of paperwork.  The two of us…we don't' really exist there and…it could take a lot of work.  And…I mean, what if they've forgotten about me?  What f they don't wanna know me?  What if my sister hates me?  What if-"

Stephen crushed his mouth to Buffy's effectively shutting her up.  She relaxed against him, thankful that she wouldn't be in this alone.  She couldn't imagine the things that Stephen would be feeling about going to L.A.  He had no memories of being in that reality, and it would be completely overwhelming for him.  It would be terrifying for them both, and they were somehow thankful that at least they would have each other.

"They haven't forgotten you love," he whispered, their foreheads touching gently, their noses rubbing together affectionately.  "You've been here for four hundred years and you can still remember them.  They'll love you as much as you love them."

She smiled, knowing that his words made sense, but she still felt the panic inside of her.  She inhaled deeply and let out a large sigh.

"Okay…I'm ready.  And no matter what happens…I love you."

------------------------

The ritual was half finished by the time the first demon attacked.  Stephen stood, taking a defensive position immediately.  Buffy continued, not wanting to break the ritual in case it couldn't be tried again.  She made eye-contact with Stephen who just nodded and continued on in the fight.

Buffy took Stephen's dagger and made a small slit in her palm, sprinkling some of her blood on the ground in front of her.  Mid-battle, she threw the dagger to Stephen who caught it, slit his hand and managed to throw the dagger back to her so that his blood on the dagger would spill onto the ground.  He continued his attack on the demon, finally defeating it and letting it slump away.

He rejoined Buffy, kneeling in front of her, listening to her recite the incantation in a language that neither of them understood.  Buffy held out her hand and took his, the two cuts on their palms mingling together.  The second their palms hit each others, the air shifted.

The portal was beginning to open directly under them and they scrambled to stand up, out of the portals way until it had opened completely.

Of course, the problem with portals is that there are other demons wanting to leave.  Especially when the dimension was one such as Quortoth, ruled by death, destruction and despair. Buffy and Stephen looked around them, dismayed to see at least ten demons standing around them, all of the demons paired off with each other.

Buffy just tilted her head towards the portal, suggesting that they just jump into it before the demons could begin their attack, but two of the pairs saw the movement and lunged towards them.

With a sense of panic, they began the battle, the demons surprisingly easy to kill.  Within minutes, the pack of ten had been reduced to three.  The main problem however, occurred when the third-wheel made a break for the portal and managed to evade both Buffy and Stephen.  It jumped into the swirling white mass and disappeared.

Buffy and Stephen exchanged panicked looks just as Stephen had defeated another of the demons.  With only one left and the other on the other side of the portal, Stephen made an executive decision that could have cost him his life.

"Go!  Before it gets too far!"

Buffy hesitated, but grabbed her white back-pack and leaped into the portal, silently praying to the Powers That Be that they would give her a break and let her husband live.  


	15. Teal

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TEAL

(Takes place at the end of the episode 'The Price' and will continue on into 'A New World'.  Definitely helps if you've seen these eps!)

The crew from Angel Investigations had relaxed slightly, the problem at hand had been solved, albeit in a way that Angel didn't entirely approve of, but his judgement hadn't been too brilliant lately, so he was unable to comment.  Gunn had brought Wesley back onto the crew momentarily, and even though Angel understood that desperate times called for desperate measures, he hated the fact that someone he despised was still helping them.

Lorne however, hadn't forgotten that their problems hadn't been completely solved.  

"Is everyone forgetting we got a little unexpected company on the way?" the green demon asked incredulously.  As glad as he was that Fred was alright, there were more important things to be worrying about.  "It goes by the initials 'the destroyer'."

The group suddenly tensed once more, not even allowed to enjoy a moments victory.

"Yeah, we got that," Cordy said, a little annoyed by their lack of reprieve.  "Any idea when?"

Fred's eyes went wide as she saw static in the air above the pentagram that refused to erase from the Hyperion foyer floor.  She swallowed hard and looked pointedly at the discharges in the air.

"Uhm…I think now."

The group turned as a whole to see the air crackling.  Without warning, a demon dropped to the ground, landing on its feet.   The demon roared fiercely, glad to finally be free of the dimension that had imprisoned it for centuries.  Of course, as the demons luck would have it, its freedom was short lived.

The tiny blonde dressed in black flew through the portal seconds later, landing on her feet and quickly engaging in battle with the demon, her movements too quick to really be seen by the group.

Angel stood watching in shock, wondering what the hell was going on.  If the demon was meant to be the Destroyer, what was the small creature that was defeating it.  Unless the smaller creature was the Destroyer.  Of course, the small creature couldn't be that dangerous, taking its size into account.

Of course, that was Angel's thoughts before the small black-clad creature made easy work of the large demon that had landed only seconds before.  The demons head rolled and the body disintegrated into a pile of green goo. 

Buffy grinned as she stood with her crossbow aimed directly at Angel's heart.

"Hello lover."

------------------------

The last of the demons proved to be something of a challenge for Stephen.  It obviously wanted out of this dimension, for which Stephen couldn't blame it.  Of course, he wasn't about to let the demon go.  It took nearly a minute to subdue the demon and kill it.  He turned back to the space where Buffy had disappeared into only moments ago, the portal seeming to be a little smaller.

He gasped as he saw the portal begin to close up.  Running back to it and quickly grabbing his pile of weapons, he threw himself into the portal finally free of the prison that had held him for his entire life.

------------------------

"Oh…"

"My…"

"God…"

Buffy would have usually smiled in that situation.  Cordy, Angel and the green skinned demon's reactions would have been comical if it weren't for the severity of the whole thing.

Anegl's mouth went dry as he stared at the girl he believed to be dead.  The one girl he had loved in two hundred and twenty years.  The girl that he had attend a funeral for over seven months ago.

"Buffy," Angel whispered.

Cordy looked completely baffled.  She was torn between complete disbelief and a lack of shock.  She had, after all, lived on a hellmouth for most of her life and had suddenly become part demon to hell fight the good fight.  Surely something like this shouldn't seem too unusual.

Groo looked the girl up and down, having no idea of what her connection with Angel was.

"She is the Destroyer?" he asked quietly to Lorne.

Buffy shook her head, having heard Groo's question.

"I'm the Slayer, nothing more."

Angel swallowed, still unable to form words.

"But…the Destroyer was meant to be coming.  Those…those creatures were terrified of it," Fred said frantically, her voice a loud whisper.

Buffy grinned and looked up at the static still crackling.

"He probably just wants to make a big entrance," she explained.

"Who?" Gunn asked, read to race to the weapons cabinet the second he had a chance.

The air shifted again and Stephen fell through the portal, tucking into a roll at just the right moment so as to land on his feet.  He recovered his balance and directed his newest weapon at the dark vampire.

"Hi dad."


	16. Orange

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ORANGE

Buffy looked to her husband, momentarily ignoring the crew from Angel Investigations.  She grinned at him, but his eyes were kept solely on Angel.

"You're late," she commented.

"Hard day at work love," he replied, a smile coming involuntarily to his face.

"Any problems?"

"Just him," Stephen replied, looking squarely at Angel.

Buffy shrugged and looked back at the still shocked team.

"Well, we'd better finish this then," she commented.

Stephen just smirked and went to pull the trigger on his new weapon.

Gunn saw his chance and raced towards the weapons cabinet as Groo side-stepped to get a better angle at the pair of humans who had come from the portal.  He threw his axe a split second before Angel could cry out.

"Wait!" 

Stephen just took aim and fired twice in quick succession, Angel twisting to the left to avoid being staked in the heart, and deflecting the other stake with a flying hand.

Buffy had kept her eyes trained on the axe flinging towards them and with a swift kick had prevented it from hitting them.  It flew to the side of the room, away from the others.

"Interesting," Connor commented.

Buffy just bit back a smile and kept her eyes on the three males who seemed to be doing all the fighting.  Cordy, the other girl and the green-skinned demon seemed to be staying away from the fray, for which Buffy was extremely grateful for.  The odds weren't even, but it was definitely in their favour.  Buffy and Stephen were exceptional fighters and a well-knit team.  

Angel went wide-eyed once more, still baffled.  All he could see in front of him was his son and the girl he still loved.

"My God…it's you.  Connor."

Stephen shot off another three of the stakes, hating the name that the creature had called it.  His father had explained about the two vampires who had been his biological parents, had even explained the name he had been given at birth and why it was important to the demon in front of him.  Connor.  Traditionally an Irish name.  He felt nauseous whenever he had heard the name from his dad, but hearing this creature speak it merely angered him. 

Angel ducked and rolled to avoid being staked and looked up as Cordy called his name, throwing him a sword.  He caught it deftly and turned to face his son and his ex-love.

Stephen dropped his new weapon, and reached for the blade hidden at his back.  He swiped quickly at Angel, who quickly parried the blow.  Conner quickly flipped across the air, performing a one-handed cart-wheel that he had only perfected three months ago.  It was a favourite of his, quick and showy.  

Buffy just held off Gunn and Groo who had no chance of defeating a warrior who'd had four hundred odd years to perfect her technique.  The two men were both out for the count before Buffy had even had a chance to break a sweat.  She stood back calmly and watched her husband fighting the soulful vampire.

Stephen and Angel were fairly evenly matched.  Angel had the advantage of a few centuries of experience behind him.  Stephen had the advantage of being smaller and a little faster than his father was.  Neither of them was tiring and the fight was going at a pace too fast for anyone to try and send any flying fatalities towards them without the risk of accidentally shooting Angel.

Buffy shoot a look towards the group who stood on the top landing just next to the door, effectively blocking the exit.  The green-skinned demon was holding the brunette girl protectively whilst Cordy stood in front of them with a sword in her hands.  She looked to the ground where Gunn and Groo lay, stirring from the hard hits they had suffered from earlier.

She looked back and did a double-take.  In the moment it had taken her to look away, Angel had gotten the better of his son and had Stephen in a corner on the floor with Stephen's blade at his throat.  Buffy raced towards them, pulling Angel away from her husband and pulling Stephen into a standing position.  He went to attack again, but the second he looked into Buffy's eyes he knew it was time to make their escape.

He squeezed her hands and quickly tugged her towards the front door, the two of them racing out the door into the sunlight, neither of them even able to savour the feeling as they heard the others chasing after them.

She heard Angel cry out in protest as they went into the sunlight where they couldn't follow.

Stephen went to pull Buffy into the traffic, but even after four centuries in a hell-dimension, Buffy knew they wouldn't be able to contend with the traffic on a Los Angeles street.  She pulled him away from the road and raced with him along the foot-path, the two of them receiving odd looks from the other pedestrians.  It took Buffy a moment to realise why they were being stared at.

Stephen was looking extremely conspicuous in his demon-hide shirt and pants, with his string of trophies strung proudly across his torso.  She realised that they were both still holding fairly lethal weapons, but that couldn't be helped just now.  She needed to find them a safe place where they could hide out until they formulated a better plan.

------------------------

Gunn and Groo went back into the hotel, both of them a little nervous about Angel's reaction to them loosing the pair that had only moments ago dropped from the portal.

They walked back in half-way through a conversation.

"That was it.  That was it Angel," Cordy said, worry in her voice.

"No, no it isn't.  I'm gonna go find them," he said.  He didn't feel as confident as he sounded.

"I mean the fight you just had.  That was the vision I had yesterday," she explained.

"You never mentioned Connor or Buffy!"

"Because I only saw you," she replied, still unsure why the Powers That Be had sent her a vision that she didn't have enough information about to stop from bringing about.

"Angel, I hate to bring that up, but are we sure that was Connor?  Just cause he said 'hi dad'?" Gunn asked.  "And…well, no offence, but that couldn't have been Buffy.  She…she's dead man."

"That was them," Angel replied.  He could have told those two apart from everyone else in the world if he had to.  There was no mistaking it.  The pair that had just fought him had been Buffy and Connor.

"Couple of weeks ago he was wearing diapers.  Now he's like twenty?" Gunn said, still unconvinced.

"Tell me we don't live in a soap-opera," Cordy said, her voice heavy even as she tried for a little bit of levity. 

"Well, personally, I'm less worried about the 'how he grew up' than the 'why he…they came back'," Lorne said.

"He came back because he could. He found a way to escape that place," Angel said.  He didn't even want to imagine how horrific Quortoth was.  His son had grown up in a hell-dimension because of the sins of his father.  

"And where the hell does Buffy fit into all of this?" Cordy added.

Angel looked at his friend thoughtfully.  Where the hell did Buffy fit into all of this?  Unless the Powers That Be had brought her back.  But it didn't make any sense.  Surely the Powers would have informed Cordy if they were going to bring Buffy back.  That was big news.

"Wh-where would they have gone?" Fred asked cautiously.

Angel stopped for a moment, a look of thoughtfulness on his face.

"They…they could have gone anywhere.  What if…Buffy might take him to Sunnydale," Angel considered.

"We need to warn them.  I mean, if Buffy's trying to kill you, what's to stop her from trying to kill them," Cordy suggested.

Cordy went to start towards the phone but Angel stopped her.

"This was personal.  If they had wanted me dead, I'd be long-gone by now.  Buffy could have killed me instead of throwing me off him," Angel said.

"Well, maybe she just wanted to save that honour for Connor," Lorne suggested.

"Well, we hafta find them before they can cause any mayhem," Gunn said.  He paused and considered his statement.  "Any _more_ mayhem."

"Okay…I'm someone who's been stuck in a hell-dimension all my life…where would I go?" Cordy wondered out loud.

There was silence until Fred cleared her throat.  Cordy looked at her friend who had a small smile on her face.

"Well…it might be a long shot, but…the first thing I did…I mean, after I came out of my room…I sat on the beach for hours," she admitted.

Gunn gave her an encouraging smile and she smiled back at him. 

"Alright, Gunn, Fred, you guys go down to the Santa Monica pier.  Buffy used to spend a lot of time there, maybe she'd wanna go back there.  I'm gonna head underground, see if I can get any info from some of my demon contacts.  Cordy, find where Hank Summers lives, check out that address if he's still in L.A, she may have gone to her dad's.  Groo, go with Cordy, just in case they ended up there.  Lorne…can you stay here, just in case?" Angel said.

The group agreed and quickly went their separate ways, each of them not entirely sure that they would even be able to take down the duo in their own small groups.  They hadn't been able to make a dent in either of the two when they were all together, the chances of taking them out when they were separated was even less likely. 


	17. Yellow

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: YELLOW

They ran until they reached the beach where Stephen stopped abruptly, his sudden halt startling Buffy and making her stop as well.  She looked at her husband curiously and followed his awe-struck gaze.  She smiled softly and leaned closed to kiss him gently.

"It's beautiful isn't it," she whispered.

He could only nod, his eyes still trained on the blue of the ocean in front of them.  The beach below them was crowded with people, families with children, teenagers lying on towels working on their tans, but Buffy could only see Stephen as he took in the brand new world that he had only ever heard about.

He had dreamt about the world Buffy had once lived in, relying only on her descriptions of the world.  He had never imagined it to be anything like this.  The sky was a perfect shade of blue, the water reflecting it as children's playful screams rang in the air.

He looked at her thoughtfully and then looked back at the ocean.  He kissed her once more and pulled back a smile on his face.

"I always dreamt about the water being as beautiful as the colour of your eyes.  It can't even compare," he said.

She felt tears come to her eyes at his words and pulled him into an embrace that would have been painful for anyone other than them.  She pulled him to the stairs that descended to the beach and dragged him across the sand, the texture of it foreign to Stephen's bare feet.  

The ground in Quortoth had always been rock-hard and dry, never the softness of the yellow sand on the beach.  Closer to the water's edge, she stopped and dropped her crossbow, covering it with her jacket.  She unfolded her white dress and laid the journal and her shoes under the black leather.  She turned to Stephen and tugged off his string of trophies as well as his shirt.  He looked around at all the people on the beach.

"Here love?" he asked nervously.

She laughed at his innocence and just kissed him passionately until he forgot that there were so many people watching them.  He held her to him, still astounded by the feel of her body against his.

In a move so quick that anyone who had been watching would still have been left confused, Buffy had changed from her black-tee shirt and leather pants into the white dress.  She caught her hand with his and dragged him to the waters edge.

She smiled as he looked at it cautiously.  The water pools in Quortoth had been small ponds that hadn't even had a ripple run through them, let along the waves that crashed against the shore.

"Come on!" she said, dragging him into the water as a wave crashed against them.  Stephen spluttered but smiled as he saw the smile that lit his wife's face.  She looked so young, so innocent in that moment when a wave pulled her under.  She jumped through the surface of the water and pushed her wet hair back on her face.

She tackled him playfully, making sure to keep hold of him, knowing that he wouldn't be able to swim.  He went under the water and came up with a grin on his face, shaking his head like a dog ridding itself of water.  Buffy held her hands over her face to avoid the spray from his wet hair.  

Neither of them noticed the young couple standing on the beach guarding their clothing and their weapons with identical looks on their faces.

Both looked as though they wanted to hate the young couple rough-housing in the water, but they were biting back smiles at this playful innocence from the two people that Angel cared most about in the world.  They were a little shocked to see Stephen grab Buffy around the waist and kiss her passionately, Fred turning a little red at the thought of being a voyeur.

She had to admit, she could sympathise with the young couple in the water.  The joy of new experiences, or even old-experiences re-learnt was something she had revelled in.  But Stephen had never been to the beach before, had probably never even seen water before.

As for Buffy, Fred thought, the girl had been dead and was suddenly very much alive.  She paled as a thought suddenly flitted across her mind and her legs failed to keep her standing.  Gunn noticed the change instantly and helped her to stay standing.

"Fred?  What is it baby?"

She turned to him, a horrified expression on her face.

"Buffy…she…she was in Quortoth.  With Connor," she said.

He nodded, already having realised that.  "I know."

"No, you don't.  She…she's been dead for what?  Seven months now?  I…I think she's been in Quortoth that whole time," she said. 

Gunn looked a little worried about that himself.  He quickly cast a glance to the water, grateful that the young couple was still in the water, still completely entranced with each other.

"Charles…if Connor was only there for a week and a half in our time, and he's twenty now…how long must Buffy have been there?" she asked.

Gunn completely paled at that and tried to calculate the years in his mind.  Fred beat him to it though.  

"Oh God…four hundred and forty years.  Give or take, depending on the exact day she was pushed into the portal," Fred said.  She felt herself wanting to be sick as the thought rolled through her head.  Five years in Pylea had been hell, but the young woman splashing playfully in the water had been stuck for over four hundred years.

Fred and Gunn were so completely caught up in trying to comprehend how long that really was and completely missed the saturated couple walking towards them, smiles still on their faces, their hands clasped together.

Stephen faltered a little as he saw them, but Buffy continued walking.  Buffy swallowed hard and tried to imagine what must be going through their minds about this revelation.  She could remember Whistler telling her how the time difference between this reality and Quortoth worked.  Fifteen years was one week here, and if Stephen was only twenty, then he must have only been missing for about nine days.

These people had known him when he was only a few months old, had probably changed him and fed him and done everything that a newly born child needed to have done.

She felt a twinge in her own stomach and put her free hand over it protectively.  She couldn't help but feel guilty for wanting to cause Angel so much grief.  She couldn't imagine what it must be like for his child to have been stolen from him, only to show up the next week but suddenly be twenty years old.  To have missed out on so much life.

It was in that moment that she knew that she and Stephen would have to go back.  They would have to face Angel, and they would have to be willing to leave their swords at the door.  Stephen wasn't going to like that idea at all.


	18. Indigo

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: INDIGO

After a twenty minute discussion with Stephen, trying to reason with him, Buffy had been able to convince him that going back to the hotel was actually a good idea and not the terrible one he had originally thought it to be.

Gunn and Fred had been reluctant to give them time to themselves in case they had run off once more, but when Buffy had not only given them her word that they would just be out of hearing distance, and had sealed that promise by giving Gunn Giles' journal, he had believed that the young woman would keep her word.

It had taken the entire twenty minutes for Stephen to ever consider speaking to Angel, rather than just attacking.  He was convinced that Angel and Angelus were exactly the same thing, and, having heard Holtz's discussions about Angelus, she couldn't blame Stephen for being apprehensive.  

It was when he accused her of just wanting to see Angel that things got ugly.

"You still love him don't you?" he accused angrily.

She just stared at him in wide-eyed shock, contemplating the idea of slapping him across the face.  Her hand tightened into a fist, but she kept it at her side, not wanting to strike her husband when it was in anger.  Her wide-eyed stared narrowed into a glare and Stephen immediately saw that he had said the wrong thing.

"How dare you?" she asked seethingly, her voice low, quiet and threatening.  "I love you Stephen.  You, not him.  I've had over four hundred years to get over him, and it's long gone.  When I got out of that portal, he was the first thing I saw.  And you know what I felt?  Nothing.  I didn't feel a thing for him.  But when you came through, it was all I could do to keep from touching you.  I love you okay?  With everything that I am, I love you."

Stephen swallowed hard and averted his eyes.  Buffy stepped forward and touched her forehead to his, leaning in to kiss him gently, her arms wrapping around him.  He returned the embrace gratefully, tears in his eyes.

"I know," he whispered.  "I know you love me, I just…where Angelus is concerned, I get a bit…"

"Crazy, I know," Buffy replied.  "And I understand that.  But Angelus and Angel aren't the same things.  Trust me, I had first hand experience there."

Stephen swallowed hard once more and sighed loudly, just enjoying the feeling of having Buffy in his arms.  

"I'm sorry," he whispered, kissing her shoulder softly.  

"It's alright," she whispered back.

He put a hand to her cheek, looking down at her lovingly.  "Maybe you're right."

She smiled and leant into his touch.

"Maybe?"

He rolled his eyes and tried to keep from laughing.  "I know, I know.  You're always right."  He breathed in deeply and held his shoulders high.  "I'll talk to him."

------------------------

On the walk back to the hotel, Gunn had made an excited phone call to Angel, who had promised to meet them back at the hotel.  Stephen had been fascinated by Gunn's cell phone and was studying it, turning it every which way, trying to understand how the small device could allow two people to communicate when they were no where near each other.

Fred had just smiled at Stephen as he had tried to figure out the phone.  He had eventually given up and Gunn had pocketed the phone.  The walk back had taken nearly half an hour, due to constant stops and questions from Stephen.

He had picked a small flower and given it to Buffy who took it from him gratefully and had placed it in her hair.  Gunn and Fred had tried explaining the concept of cars and public transport, but Buffy had just whispered that she would explain it all later to him, and he had been grateful.  Trying to take in twenty years worth of technology and life was beginning to be overwhelming to him, and he has stopped the questions, content to just walk beside his wife in this strange new world.

They had reached the exterior of the hotel when Stephen ahad stopped and squeezed Buffy's hand tightly.  Buffy stopped and turned to her husband, a worried look on her face.  Immediately she saw the nervous expression on Stephen's face and just squeezed his hand encouragingly.

"You can do this," she whispered.

Gunn and Fred looked on in fascination, these two people having completely forgotten about everything else in the world, content in their own little world.

"I…I don't think I can," he whispered.

"Stephen, you can do anything.  You survived in Quortoth, a hell dimension.  You can handle talking to Angel."

"He killed my father's family," he said.

Buffy reached up and traced the worry lines on his forehead until the eventually smoothened under her touch, Stephen's face softening under his wife's gentle ministrations.

"_Angelus_ killed your father's family.  Angel's a good man.  A little broody from what I remember, but…he is good.  He helps people.  He's trying to make up for what he did," she explained.

"How can he?  How many people died unnecessarily because of him?" Stephen asked.

"We went through this earlier," she said.

Stephen sighed and nodded, still feeling nervous.  He had heard so many things about the man who was his real father, and none of them had been good until Buffy had explained Angel's curse and how it worked.  He could understand that Angel and Angelus weren't the same people, or vampires rather.  But seeing the vampire who had done what horrible things to his fathers family was almost too much.

"I know.  I'm just…nervous," he admitted.

"I'll be right here," she whispered.  "By your side, all the way.  Just like always."

Stephen nodded and breathed out quickly.  "Just like always."

Buffy smiled and kissed him quickly, breaking away and pulling him up the path towards the hotel before he could change his mind.

------------------------

Angel was pacing the lobby of the hotel, Cordy looking on nervously.  Groo could only lean against the counter and watch as his princess watched another man, instead of watching him.  He turned his face away when he could no longer take it.  Cordelia had never once looked at him like that, and it was slowly killing him.  He knew he would have to give her up before his heart completely shattered in his chest.  It was just a matter of being able to let her go.

Lorne was standing behind the counter, a weapon on top of it in case the kid decided to go nuts again.

The door opened and Angel turned towards it, his body stilling as he saw his son and his ex-lover standing on the top landing, their hands tightly clasped together.  Gunn and Fred stood in front of the door, blocking the exit.

Angel noticed that it was Buffy who led them to the bottom step, stopping just in front of Angel.  Stephen's grip was becoming almost painful, but Buffy endured it, allowing her husband to have an outlet for his hesitation and his nerves.

"Connor," Angel breathed out.

Stephen went to step forward to begin a fight, but Buffy held onto him tightly, her free hand coming to his arm, rubbing it soothingly.  Stephen calmed himself down and remained at Buffy's side.  The gesture didn't go un-noticed by Angel and he could only wonder how Buffy and Connor had ended up coming here, not only together, but romantically together.

"My name's Stephen," he said quietly.

Angel faltered, not having expected those words to come from his son.

"Okay," Angel finally said.  "Stephen…it's a good name.  Not Irish, but…look, I know we haven't got off to a good start, but…if we could just take a minute.  Just to talk."

Stephen swallowed and bit his lower lip, a habit he had picked up from Buffy.  Angel didn't miss that either and he almost turned away, but he couldn't bring himself to stop looking at his son.

"Alright," Stephen agreed.  Buffy smiled and kept rubbing his arm, keeping him calm.

"Uh…maybe we could uh…go into my office.  Talk alone?" Angel said nervously.

Stephen tightened his grip and Buffy almost cried out at it.  He looked towards Buffy, panic-stricken.

"You don't have to go alone if you don't want to," she said.

Stephen looked between his father and his wife, trying to weigh up what could happen.  Finally he loosened his grip on Buffy's hand and stepped towards his father.  

"Lead the way," he said, his voice not betraying the nervousness he felt.

Buffy bit back a smile and watched as Angel's face lit up.  Father and son walked away and Buffy was left standing in the lobby of the hotel with Cordy, Groo and Lorne.

She watched them walk off until she could no longer see them.  She glanced around the hotel nervously, suddenly very much aware of being alone with people she had been fighting only an hour ago.

She gave a short, nervous smile to Cordy who just stared back at her.  Cordy finally stepped forward until the were only inches apart.  Buffy braced herself for a fight, but was somewhat surprised when Cordy threw her arms around her.  Hesitating for only a second, Buffy returned the hug.

Cordy suddenly gasped and began glowing brightly.  Groo and Lorne rushed over to her, but found they couldn't touch her while she was like that.  Buffy struggled, becoming incredibly worried when she felt her skin begin to get warm.  She couldn't pull away, Cordy suddenly having some kind of magical hold on her.

Buffy inhaled sharply as she felt something pull itself away from her insides.  Cordy took a step back and Buffy collapsed to her knees, her body shaking with violent sobs.  Cordy fell to her knees and pulled the girl into her arms, rocking her gently.  She looked up at Groo who was looking on in confusion.  

Fred had raced into the office to grab a glass of water, coming back out and handing it to Cordy along with a box of tissues.  Cordy smiled at the girl gratefully and tried to get Buffy to sit up, but the Slayer was still sobbing violently.  

Gunn, Fred, Groo and Lorne just looked on, still unsure as to what had happened.  Cordy had no idea what she had done, but there were tears on her face as she realised exactly what Buffy had endured.

Cordy managed to coax Buffy into sipping some of the water, a small smile coming to her face as she drank it.  Her sobbing subsided and she managed to calm herself down, surprised by the outburst.  She felt clean though, as though whatever Cordy had done had cleansed her completely.  She closed her eyes, feeling content for a moment, before realising that the only thing she needed to feel completely whole was her husband.

She looked up at Cordy, both of their eyes red from crying.  "Thanks," she whispered quietly.

Cordy just smiled and rubbing her shoulder comfortingly.

Groo helped Cordy get Buffy onto the circular couch and Cordy shot a look towards Fred who stepped forward and took over Cordy's position on the couch, Buffy not even realising who it was that was beside her.

Cordy looked hesitantly towards where Angel had taken Connor…Stephen rather.  If Stephen was anything like Buffy was, there was a chance that Angel wouldn't be leaving the room as more than a large pile of dust.


	19. Russet

CHAPTER NINTEEN: RUSSET

Stephen and Angel stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say to each other.  Angel was watching as Stephen stood fidgeting with his hands, desperately wishing he had a weapon in his hands, if only for the comfort of it.  He definitely wished he had have asked Buffy to stay with him.

"So…" Angel started awkwardly.

"So…"

Angel looked away and finally decided that this wasn't the best way to begin. 

"Maybe we should sit down," he suggested, gesturing to the leather chairs of the office.  

Stephen nodded and took a seat awkwardly, not used to the feeling of a comfortable chair underneath him.  Even his bed hadn't been as comfortable as the seat his father had offered him.  He settled into it and kept his eyes averted.

"How uh…how are you?" Angel asked, wishing he knew the words to say to his estranged son.

Stephen considered the question, knowing that in the grand scheme of things, he wasn't doing horribly.  He was still upset over his father's passing, but his life with Buffy and their romance was going brilliantly, something for which he was extremely grateful.

"I'm okay," he finally replied.  "Things are…confusing here, but…I'm okay."

Angel nodded, knowing that if his heart could actually beat it would be going at a million miles an hour.  He could hear Stephen's heart beating nervously.

"What can you…what can you tell me about yourself?" Angel asked, tears in his eyes.  These were the questions that he shouldn't have had to have answers for.  He should have known these answers.

"Well…I uh…grew up in Quortoth.  But, you already knew that," he said bitterly.  Angel winced but Stephen continued before Angel could try and explain that to him, Connor had only been gone for nine days, not the twenty years that Stephen had experienced.

"My dad built a hut in the East end of Quortoth, close to a supply of water.  It was uh…it was pretty quiet there.  There weren't any other people there until…well, I met Buffy two years ago.  And…I fell in love with her," Stephen said, a smile coming to his face as he remembered his first meeting with Buffy and the subsequent conversations and eventual romance that had come about afterwards. 

Angel didn't know what to feel about that.  His son was in love with the woman that Angel himself had fallen in love with only six years ago.  It was material for a Jerry Springer show, but he also knew that he couldn't fault Stephen for falling for Buffy.  There was something so magnetic about her personality that it made it impossible for people to not love her.

"And the two of you are…" Angel couldn't bring himself to say the words.  'Together', 'involved', 'romantically entangled'.

"We're married," Stephen said.

Once more Angel's heart lurched.  Not just involved but married.  Angel swallowed hard and managed a small smile.

"And you're…happy?"

Stephen smiled softly, momentarily forgetting that he was meant to hate the creature that he was talking to.

"In twenty years I've never felt as happy as I am when I'm with her.  It's like everything in the world just goes dark and she's all I can see.  I love her."

Angel nodded once more.  He could remember first hand what that was like.

A frantic knock on the door disturbed them and Stephen was on his feet in an instant, taking on a defensive posture.  He relaxed slightly when Cordy poked her head around the door.

"I hate to interrupt, but…I think Buffy really needs you Con…I mean, Stephen," she said.

Stephen was immediately back on guard.

"Why?  What happened?  Is she okay?"  he went to rush past her, but she caught his arm.  He gasped and Cordy felt a familiar glow of white coming from her.  It transferred itself into Stephen and he felt something filling his insides, pouring into his soul and slowly cleansing him of everything that had ever happened.

Cordy let go and he felt himself begin to choke on his sobs.  He ran from the room, only remembering that Cordy had said something about Buffy needing him.

Cordy went to follow but Angel grabbed her.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, furious that she had done something that had so obviously upset his son.

"That was…I don't know what it was but…God Angel," she whispered.  He finally saw the teas on her cheeks and pulled her close to him, hugging her tightly, protectively.

"They're in so much pain.  They had…so much hate.  Angel, that place, it was…it was killing them," Cordy sobbed.

Angel could only hold her as she cried, worrying for not only his sobbing friend but for his son and his…daughter-in-law/ex-lover.  

Angel looked up when he heard a gentle knock on the door.  Lorne looked around the door and gave a sympathetic smile to Angel as he broke away from Cordy.

"You've got two crying kids on your couch in the lobby," Lorne explained quietly.  "You got some serious mojo going on there girl.  Whatever deal you struck with the Powers, it looks to me like they gave you the full package…all the extras.   Those kids were toxic when they came in.  Heavy on the ick."

"What actually happened just now?" Angel asked 

"In my professional opinion? Well, Miss demon-y britches here gave that child some kind of 'soul colonic'. Flushed him out but good," Lorne said.

"Flushed what out?" Angel asked, confusion evident in his voice.

"It was that place, Quortoth. It crept into every part of both of them.  They were sick with it," Cordy explained.

Angel took Cordy's hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"Thank you. Thank you for doing this for him.  For them," Angel said.

Cordy looked at him sadly.

"I know what it was like for him there, the darkness and the confusion. He thought it was where he belonged.  And Buffy…God…she was there for years," Cordy said, tears coming to her eyes at the thought.

Angel looked at her confused.  Lorne touched his shoulder comfortingly.

"I just spoke to Fred and…according to her calculations, Buffy woulda been in Quortoth for at least four hundred years," Lorne said.

Angel felt his stomach churn at the thought.  Four hundred years.  He had spent maybe a hundred years in hell when Buffy had killed him, and he'd gone slowly insane over that time.  But, four hundred years in a hell dimension hadn't done all that much to his ex-love.  

"It was killing her," Cordy said.  "She was…she was alone for four hundred years until…well, until she met Stephen."

"Poor kid," Lorne said, looking back towards the lobby where Buffy and Stephen were sitting on the couch, holding each other and crying.  "That's a long time to be alone."

Cordy wiped away her tears and looked towards Angel.  "That was her biggest fear in High School.  Being alone."

Angel swallowed hard and tried to comprehend what his son and the girl he had once loved had gone through.  It was too much to try and conceive and he knew that he would never truly understand what had happened.  All he could do now was sit back and lend his support in whatever way he could.  He looked towards Cordy and gave a small smile.

"I think we're about to have a road-trip," he said.

Cordy looked confused for a moment before she finally understood.    
  


"Sunnydale?"

"Sunnydale." 


	20. Cream

CHAPTER TWENTY: CREAM

It was nearly three days before Buffy and Stephen were anywhere near ready to leave the hotel.  They had spent the better part of the last few days in the room Angel had given them either crying or making love, or a combination of bother.  Cordy had gone shopping for both of them, buying items that she knew Buffy had liked, and buying items for Stephen that she thought would suit them, looking suspiciously like the clothing Angel wore, minus the leather.

The drive to Sunnydale had been done in silence, not even the radio going on as Buffy and Stephen sat in the back, clutching each others hands as lifelines.  Angel and Cordy were up front with Angel driving.  Stephen had been scared stiff of the car at first, asking what type of a demon it was, and after a brief explanation from Angel and Cordy as to how it worked, they had coaxed Stephen into sitting in the back.  The top was open to make it seem less claustrophobic, and the night air was cool against their skin.

Angel kept casting glances towards the back seat, checking on his son and his…daughter-in-law every so often to make sure they hadn't jumped from the car.  Buffy looked nervous and was visibly shaking, her hand only kept still by Stephen's larger one enclosing it tightly.

When Buffy started hyperventilating at the thought of seeing her sister and her friends again, Angel was forced to stop the car so that Buffy could get out and throw up on the side of the road.  Stephen stood beside her, gently rubbing her back.  Buffy had set herself down on the gutter and sobbed miserably into her husbands new button-up shirt.

"I can't do this," she whispered.

He just held her and rocked her gently as Angel and Cordy leant against the car looking at each other worriedly.  

"You can, Buffy.  And just like you were beside me, I'm right beside you," he whispered.  "For better or worse, remember?  We're a team and _we_ can do this."

She just sniffled and held onto him tightly, her mind digging through the memories now four hundred and forty years old.  She could barely remember what her mother looked like, and that thought was more horrible than any other.  She had forgotten the exact shade of hazel that her sister's eyes were.  She had forgotten the brightness of Willow's hair and the dark contrast that was Xander's hair and usual five o'clock shadow.  Anya and Tara barely even registered anymore, and she couldn't even visualise Spike's trademark smirk either.  Giles gentle smile and fatherly scowl were almost lost to her and she desperately wanted to remember.

But she'd been gone for seven months now, according to Angel and Cordy.  What if they'd moved on?  What if they weren't in Sunnydale anymore?  (Cordy had assured her that her sister was still in the house on Revello Drive, living with Tara and Willow as well as the de-ratted Amy.)

Buffy finally calmed herself and looked towards Angel with tears still in her eyes.

"Let's go," she said.

He grinned at her and opened the door to the car as Stephen helped her in, holding her close to him as they continued on into Sunnydale towards her old house.

They parked outside the lit up house and Buffy almost cried out in physical anguish as she felt a million butterflies begin to attack the inside of her stomach.  She could see people moving around in the living room, could hear music playing loudly and the laughter of seemingly care-free people.  She swallowed hard and looked at Stephen.

"I'm ready."

He grinned and kissed her softly.  "You've always been ready."

She smiled and bit her lip, walking halfway up the path before stopping abruptly.

"What the hell am I meat to say?" she asked, her voice becoming panicky.

Cordy stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

"We can uh…give them a bit of a warning if you want," she suggested.

"And say what?  'Oh, by the way, you know how your sister died, she wasn't _really_ dead.  She's outside'.  Yeah, that's brilliant," Buffy said.

Stephen put his hand on her arm and she sighed in resignation.  She looked towards Cordy and apologised for snapping at the girl who had been nothing but completely helpful since their return.  It was quite a turn-around from the girl that Buffy barely remembered from high school.  She had actually had to ask Angel whether or not Cordy had always been like that, because she couldn't remember correctly anymore.  Angel had just laughed and put a hand on her shoulder.  "Cordy, helpful?  Not on your life."

"How about you just improvise," Angel suggested gently.  "You were always good at that."

Buffy closed her eyes, trying to imagine what she could possibly say to this group of people who thought she was dead without sounding idiotic.  She knew there really wasn't much she could say, but she couldn't come up with a better suggestion than Angels.  Improvisation it was.

Stephen steered her up the stairs and knocked loudly on the door before Buffy could back out once more.  He held onto her wrist tightly, not wanting her to leave the front porch now that she was there.

Buffy swallowed nervously as she heard her sister's voice cheerfully calling out that she would get the door, and Willow's easy response of 'okay'.

Dawn half opened the door and looked at Stephen, not even casting her eyes to his companion.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

Stephen nudged his wife, but she was too shocked to say anything.  Her sister looked so different from what she had remembered.  She was taller for one, she had lost a considerable amount of her puppy fat, and her usually long hair was now shoulder length.

"Uh…are you Dawn Summers?" Stephen asked, not having prepared himself to say anything, hoping his wife would have just known exactly what needed to be said as she usually knew.

"Yeah I am.  Why?" she asked, keeping herself inside the door.  Buffy smiled at that, thankful that her sister had learnt to protect herself from undead visitors but keeping a safe distance between herself and the invisible barrier.

Stephen didn't need to answer as Buffy finally regained the use of her voice.

"Dawnie," she breathed quietly.

Dawn finally looked to Stephen's right and immediately paled.  Her breath caught in her throat and she felt her knees go week.  

From inside the house, Willow bounded up behind her.

"Who's at the door Dawnie?" Willow asked.  She flung the door open wider and her reaction was exactly the same as Dawn's.  She grabbed hold of the handle on the door to keep herself standing and put a hand on Dawn's shoulder.

Dawn could only stare at her sister in shock, not even noticing the single tear that had slid down her cheek as she stood dumbly in the doorway.  She whispered her sisters name questioningly and went to step outside, but Willow grabbed her wrist.

"H-how do we know she's not a vampire?" Willow asked, still staring at Buffy in shock.

Buffy grabbed the cross that was under her shirt and lifted it up for them to see.

"I'm not," she assured them quietly.

Dawn didn't need anymore convincing and flung herself outside and onto her sister who just hugged her tightly, tears streaming down their faces.  Willow was only seconds behind and joined them in a group hug, not even noticing Stephen who stood back, leaning against the wall.  She didn't even notice Angel and Cordy who were standing at the bottom of the stairs with smiles on their faces at seeing the reunion.

Dawn pulled back from her sister a little, tears streaking her face as more continued to fall.

"How?" she whispered.

Buffy smiled and wiped the tears from her sisters cheeks.

"I was…stuck…in a hell dimension," Buffy admitted softly, running her hands through her sisters shortened hair, recalling how she had loved playing with the longer locks adorning Dawn's head.  "But…I - we found a way to get out."

Willow had gasped when she had heard Buffy's confession of being in a hell dimension and had tightened her hold on the short blonde.

"We tried to get you out Buff," she whispered hoarsely. "I swear we tried."

Buffy smiled at her old friend and touched Willow's cheek softly.  "I know you would have.  And it wasn't your fault.  There's only about two ways to get into Quortoth and not a lot of ways out.  But…we did it."

"We?" Dawn repeated.

Buffy smiled and held out a hand to Stephen who took it, suddenly feeling incredibly shy.

"Guys, this is Stephen Holtz," she said, smiling at him through her tears.  "My husband."

The twin looks of shock on Willow and Dawn's face would have been funny if the reunion hadn't been so solemn.

"Your husband?" Willow repeated, a grin coming to her face.  Stephen smiled and let each other girls give him a short hug to welcome him.

Dawn hooked her arm through her sisters, not wanting to let go for a second in case this all ended up being a dream, like so many of the others that she'd had since her sister had died instead of her.  But, none of her dreams had ever had Buffy coming back with a husband, so she felt fairly confident that this was real.  Her sister was back!

"Maybe we should take this inside," Dawn suggested.

Willow nodded and stepped back inside, Dawn pulling Buffy in with her as Buffy reached out her hand for Stephen to take.  Stephen just smiled and gave her hand a gentle squeeze, feeling incredibly emotional at the teary reunion he had witnessed.

Cordy and Angel just looked at each other grinning, before walking slowly up to the house and entering quietly behind Buffy and Stephen.  Stephen looked up to see who had followed them but relaxed when he saw Cordy and his…father.  It seemed strange to think that the man…vampire who was his father looked to be only five or so years older than himself.

Dawn cast a curious glance to see who had shut the door and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.  "What are they doing here?"

Buffy turned to see whom her sister was talking about.

"They drove us here," she explained.

Dawn nodded, seemingly content with the explanation, though she would have nodded at pretty much anything her sister told her at that point in time.  

They sat in the living room, Stephen sitting on one side of Buffy holding her hand as Dawn curled up on Buffy's other side, leaning her head against Buffy's shoulder.

"So, uh…where are the others?" she asked.  "Giles and Xander?"

It didn't escape Willow's attention that Buffy had left out Tara and Anya, though the two women weren't really part of the core Scooby Gang.  She still thought it was a little odd though.

"Xander's bringing Anya around later, we're uh…about to start decorating this place for Christmas.  Or Hanukah, depending on your religion," Willow rambled nervously.

Buffy looked startled at first until her face lit up as though remembering a piece of the past that had long being forgotten.  Willow studied her best friend curiously, wondering whether her friend had all of her memories.  She suddenly wondered who Stephen was and what how he had come to bring Buffy back to their front door step.

"So, Stephen…how do you know Buffy?" she asked casually.  The question seemed so strange to her lips, so foreign to hear the name Buffy coming from her mouth when it wasn't in whispered tones that usually brought about a solemn silence.

"We met in Quortoth a few years ago.  We uh…fell in love and married last week," he explained succinctly.  He smiled at his wife and she managed to smile back, squeezing his hand gently.

Dawn sat up and looked at her sister curiously.  She hadn't changed at all, except she seemed to be baring a few more scars than usual.  Apart from that, she looked to be exactly the same as she had when she had leapt off the tower.  

"Years?" she asked quietly.

Buffy looked at her sister and ran her hand through Dawn's hair, trying to sooth both herself and herself.

"Time moved kinda differently there," Buffy explained.

"But you don't look any older," Willow exclaimed.  "Not that that's a…you know…bad thing or anything."

Buffy grinned a little at that and looked towards Willow.

"I didn't age at all there.  The…the Powers That Be said it was kind of a test.  To see if I could work things out on my own," Buffy explained.

She still couldn't understand how the Powers could possibly think that four hundred odd years in a hell dimension could be a test.  And if the Circle of Three was the only way she could get out, why hadn't Stephen been sent to Qourtoth earlier?  Say, in the first year.  She had wanted to ask that to Whistler when he had told her she could go home, but he had disappeared before she could.  She knew that if ever she met the Powers, they would be on the receiving end of a severe ass kicking.

"Wow," Willow whispered, looking at her friend in awe.  She couldn't believe what was happening.  Willow had tried so desperately to bring Buffy back, knowing within her heart that Buffy hadn't been in a good place.  And the spell had been so close to working, but it had been interrupted.  She idly wondered whether or not the spell would have worked in any case.

"So uh…where did you say Giles was?" Buffy asked nervously.  In the four hundred years, she had never been able to forget Giles.  His journal was the one thing that had kept her almost sane in the hell dimension.  It was the only pseudo-contact that she had with human life and had helped her immensely with remembering why she was even trying to get back.

The journal was tattered and falling apart though, even though she had always taken such good care of it.  The pages were becoming yellowed and fragile, and in the last three years, she had only dared take it out every month of so for fear of completely ruining it.  She wanted to give it back to him, to tell him how much it had meant to her to have part of their group with her in Quortoth.

Dawn looked towards Willow, her face falling.  Of all people who should have been there at the reunion, Buffy's 'father' should have been there to welcome her back.

"He's…Buffy, he's…" Dawn couldn't bring herself to say it.

Buffy felt her heart plummet and Stephen's hand suddenly took the brunt of her panic.

"Oh God," Buffy whispered quietly.  "What happened?  Is he…he's not…he can't be dead."

"What, no!" Dawn cried and immediately Stephen could feel the circulation return to his hand.  "He's…he's in England."

Buffy's heart fell with disappointment, but after thinking he was dead, she cold live with him being out of the country.

"Oh, but he's coming back next week," Willow said excitedly.  "He said he'd be back for Christmas."

Buffy nodded and tried to smile.

"Looks like everyone's home for Christmas," Buffy commented quietly.


	21. Azure

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: AZURE

The reunion between Buffy and Xander had been fairly similar to that of Buffy and Willow's and Buffy and Dawn's.  Disbelief, suspicion and finally over-joyed acceptance, followed by a bone-crushing hug.  Willow had watched each reunion thoughtfully, still a little confused by Buffy nearly not recognising Tara or Anya.  What surprised her even more was the almost blank look on Buffy's face when Spike had shown up one night.

"Hey, Nibblet?" Spike had called, banging the door loudly behind him, letting the household know that he was there.  "Anyone home?"

Stephen, predator and protector to the core had raced to the foyer to see the peroxide blonde in black leather coming out of the empty living room.  Spike had looked taken aback by the new figure in the house and had been near ready to pounce before the young man had spoken to him.

"Who are you?" Spike was shocked by the almost polite manner of the young man.  Not exactly the usual profile for someone that may well be a serial killer who had done in his family.

"Name's Spike.  Who the hell are _you_?" Spike had replied angrily.

"Stephen, who was at the door?" Buffy had asked, coming out of the kitchen, her hair tumbling around her shoulders messily.  She hadn't had it straightened since returning and the water from her shower had made it wavy.  Spike had been shocked into silence.

For a moment, he had thought it was just the Buffybot, but he hadn't seen that out for more than three months.  He had listened carefully and heard the distinct heartbeats and something else faint there as well.  He shook off the smaller noise and leapt towards the small Slayer, hugging her tightly.

Buffy hadn't been expecting the attack and had tensed, but he hadn't hurt her.  He had hugged her.  This man with the shock of peroxide blonde hair in the black leather was hugging her tightly.  Stephen looked at them in alarm, feeling an intense wave of jealousy until he took in his wife's expression of complete shock and confusion.

"God Buffy...it's you," Spike had whispered, tears in his eyes.  He had just held her, not even noticing the way that she hadn't even responded at all to him.

Buffy had politely pulled herself away from him.  She racked through her memories and found a large blank when it came to this man in black.  She could feel something in her gut about him though.  Something that screamed at her that he wasn't safe.  But it wasn't usual for unsafe creatures to bound up to her and hug her in the friendliest of ways, clutching at her as though she would disappear if he were to let go.

Dawn had appeared and had smiled at Spike.  He had still been staring at Buffy in shock, and Stephen and stepped forward, putting a possessive hand on the small of her back, a gesture that Spike didn't miss at all.  His face fell as he saw the complete trust that was between Buffy and Stephen.  This certainly hadn't been the way he had dreamt of all their reunions to go.

"Isn't it great?" Dawn had asked, giving her sister another hug.  Buffy hugged her back tightly, having grown accustomed to the seemingly random hugs her sister had been giving her over the last two days.  In fact, it wasn't uncommon for anyone of the gang to give her a hug as though to reaffirm that she was truly there with them.  She had quickly grown to enjoy the hugs and found them incredibly soothing to her soul.

"How?" Spike choked out, tears still in his eyes.

"Magic, portals, blah, blah, blah," Dawn said glibly.  "What does it matter Spike?  She's home."

Spike.  That one name.  She had read it over and over in Giles' journal.  Spike, the Slayer of Slayers, William the Bloody (Awful Poet).  Her nemesis turned ally who had confessed his love to her by chaining her up and threatening to feed her to his ex.  How could she have forgotten?  Her eyes narrowed and then she had just let her face relax.  Four hundred years on and she couldn't find the effort to pick a fight with him on this.  Not even about him touching her.  

Spike had hugged Dawn quickly and had swallowed the lump in his throat.

"You're right.  Don't matter."  He flashed a teary smile to the Slayer.  "Welcome home love."

Love.  That one word.  He had thought it over and over for the last seven months.  Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Elizabeth Anne Summers.  His nemesis turned obsession who had rejected him in the worst of ways by telling him he was beneath her.  How could he have stopped hoping for her to come home?  His eyes watered and finally he could just smile.  Seven months on and he couldn't find the words he wanted to say to her.  Not even about his love for her.

Buffy had stepped back towards Stephen and had taken his hand in a show of affection and possession.  She was his and she wanted Spike to know that without a shadow of a doubt.

"Thank you William."

Willow did a double take at that.  Buffy had never addressed Spike as 'William' except when she had been taunting him with his humanity.  But this new use of the name seemed to be something completely different.  She didn't know what it meant, she knew she would probably never understand it, but she still pondered it.

Buffy's reactions to Tara and Anya had been what had baffled her most though.  Both women had been warned that Buffy was back and that she was very much alive and kicking with a husband to boot (though not literally of course).  When Tara and Anya had walked into the living rooms without their significant others, Willow had watched Buffy look extremely confused until both Tara and Anya had sat beside Willow and Xander respectively.

It was only then that Buffy had completely worked out who they were and why they were there.  And Willow instinctively knew it wasn't because she didn't have the memories of them in her mind.  It was because the memories of them were so old, so unused that Buffy had practically forgotten them.

Willow had choked back a sob at that realisation and had promised herself that she would have to have a talk with the one person who would be able to get Buffy to confess.

(Can you tell I'm a B/Ser trying to NOT make it B/S)


	22. Tan

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: TAN

It had been Dawn's idea not to tell Giles, to have Buffy's return to be a complete surprise.  Giles had called to confirm when he would be arriving in Sunnydale, telling them not to bother with picking him up from the airport, that he would just rent a car for the two weeks he would be staying in California.  Willow had been fairly bursting with excitement, but she wanted to see his reaction in person, not just hear it.

Buffy hadn't been home for the phone call, and she hadn't been informed of it either.  Dawn wanted to leave some things a mystery, and seeing Buffy's reunion with her father-figure would definitely be one worth seeing.  Giles return, however, had been one of the only topics of conversation for the last few days.  The house was decorated, the tree put up and the mistletoe placed in strange locations within the household.

The mistletoe had been a co-conspiracy between Spike and Xander, both of them wanting to get as many Christmas kisses from the girls of the house as they could.  Xander had pulled Stephen into their bet as to who could get the most kisses, completely missing Spike's low growl about Stephen being completely accepted into their fold when it had taken Spike nearly three years to gain their trust.  

Stephen had been confused by the entire holiday, even more befuddled by the tradition of mistletoe kisses, and having to have it explained to him by the entire gang who had taken Stephen's naïveté and ignorance in their stride.  They had been patient and understanding, and Xander quickly realised that it was Anya's humanification all over again.

Willow, Tara, Anya and Dawn had been cooking in the kitchen, the radio blaring loudly with old Christmas carols that were just begging to have their words changed into funnier lyrics were being massacred by the group as Xander tried to steal any titbits of food he could get his hands on.  Buffy and Stephen had been in the living room talking quietly when a crash had sent Buffy running into the other room, leaving Stephen on the couch, a small smile on his face.

He had never known people to be so…welcoming.  His father had loved him, he was sure of that.  Buffy loved him and had proven it to him time and time again, but these people had welcomed him into their home without question.  They had helped him make the transition between a demon dimension and Sunnydale, and had made it bearable for him.  They were patient when explaining things to him, they were understanding when he sometimes got confused with names of people and objects.  They had introduced him to the world of television, movies and music, trying to educate him on the finer points of all things trendy and had done so without making him feel stupid or embarrassed.

He smiled again when he heard Buffy's loud groan come from the kitchen.  It was tinged with laughter, a fact he knew from having paid attention to her every sound for the last two years that he had known her.  At the beginning, he had studied her so completely that she had once snapped at him to 'quit making her feel like a damn experiment'.  That of course had led to much questioning of what she had meant, and in turn had made Stephen feel rather like a stalker.  He had stopped treating her as an experiment long ago. 

The doorbell rang and Stephen waited for one of the gang in the kitchen to rush out to get it.  No one came and the bell rang again.  He stood up and went to the door opening it.  He came face-to-ace with an older man who looked momentarily taken aback.  The man quickly caught himself and regarded Stephen curiously.

"Can I help you?" Stephen asked, remembering how Dawn had answered the door to him the other evening.

"Uh…yes, quite possibly," came the reply.  "This is still the Summer's household?"

Stephen nodded and finally realised whom he was talking to.

"You're Giles aren't you?" he asked, a smile on his face.  He had heard so much about this man, so many different tales, especially over the last day when the gang had been regaling him with their past battles and Giles' role in more than half of them. 

"Yes I am…and uh…you are?" Giles asked.

Stephen stuck his hand out, remembering how Buffy had taught him how to shake hands properly on the first day he had met her.

"Stephen Holtz," he replied, not embellishing on his role in the household.  "It's nice to meet you.  I've heard nothing but brilliant things about you."

Giles chuckled self-consciously, wondering how this young man fit into the Scooby Gang.  No one had told him of an addition, and he had spoken to them only a day ago.  Anya was still with Xander, and as far as he knew, Willow and Tara were still together and…batting for the other team.  He didn't even entertain the idea of this young man being a suitable suitor for Dawn, seeing as Stephen looked to be about twenty to Dawn's young age of sixteen.

"I'm sure half of it's not entirely true."

Stephen just smiled and opened the door, standing out of the way to let Giles enter.  He was glad to see that the young man had a modicum of sense by not issuing a verbal invitation to a complete stranger.

"So…where is everyone?" Giles asked.

A peal of laughter broke out of the kitchen, followed by a squeal that sounded like Dawn.  Giles just smiled fondly as Stephen pointed needlessly to the kitchen.  

"They've been looking forward to you coming all day," Stephen said, walking ahead of Giles towards the kitchen.  

He walked in, Giles behind him and both men stopped as they took in the sight in front of them.  There was flour everywhere, eggs splattered on the walls, water and soapsuds and cake mix strewn throughout the room.  Willow was the first to notice Giles.

Willow threw herself into his arms, getting flour and water all over Giles' sweater.  

Giles hugged the girl back and scanned the room quickly, noticing Stephen had been hugged by a flour-clad figure as well.  He panicked when he saw the glint of gold adorning the small hand that was on Stephen's back.  A wedding ring.  He could see Dawn rubbing flour into Xander's hair and Tara and Anya were grinning at Xander's yelp of indignation.  

Willow pulled out of the hug, realising that Giles still hadn't seen or felt Buffy's presence in the room.

"Hey, Giles?"

He looked down at the young Wiccan a smile playing on his face.

"What's the one thing you want for Christmas that you know you can't have?" she asked with a grin.

He regarded her curiously, wondering what sort of a question that was.  And then he carefully considered the answer.  What _did_ he want for Christmas that he couldn't have?  The answer came to him rather painfully and he wondered what game Willow was playing at, because Willow knew the answer all too well.  What Giles wanted for Christmas was to have his Slayer by his side again.

It was then that Buffy pulled slowly away from Stephen.  She hadn't even noticed her Watcher's presence.  She had only felt Stephen enter the room and had been too entranced with the feeling of his arms to realise that there were more people in the room than was usual.  She had pulled away when she noticed the extra person.

Their eyes met, Slayer and Watcher.  Buffy wet her lips apprehensively, wanting to say something but having no words to say to the man who had been her mentor and her father in everyway but one.  Giles swallowed nervously and the room went deathly still, all eyes on the pair who had been their leaders in everything.

Giles couldn't believe his eyes, couldn't help but think that his plane had actually gone down and he had died and gone to heaven.  His Slayer was back.

Willow touched his arm gently, not expecting him to acknowledge her. 

"Merry Christmas Giles."

(I'm also a B/Ger, trying not to make it a B/G fic.  It's HARD!!!  *whines*)


	23. Burgundy

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: BURGUNDY

They gang had moved silently from the kitchen, Dawn gently pushing Stephen out, even though he was still a little cautious about leaving his wife with another man.  They adjourned to the living room and began talking quietly, leaving Buffy and Giles in the kitchen with the silence surrounding them.

Giles still stood, completely dumb-founded.  He took a small step forward to lessen the gap between them, Buffy quickly following suit until they were almost touching.  Giles slowly lifted a hand out and touched her face gently, the moment his skin touched hers, his entire resolved collapsed and he pulled her into his arms.

Buffy clutched at him tightly, feeling her own tears in her eyes.  The past week had been full of teary reunions and explanations, though she had never told anyone the complete truth about things.  She had vagued up her answer as to how long she had been in Quortoth, always saying that she couldn't' really say how long she had been here, that time was a bit of a blur when you had nothing to count it against.

She had, of course, just for curiousity's sake, worked out exactly how long she had been in Quortoth by calculating how long it had been in Sunnydale and multiplying by fifteen.  The actual number had ended up being close to 440 years, a fact that had completely astounded her.  She had been careful to rip up her scrap piece of paper, not wanting her sister or Willow to come across the number and wonder what it really meant.

Giles didn't loosen his hold on her, but he managed to put his hand under her chin so he could look at her face, his eyes searching hers.  Under the tears he could see pain and anguish and hesitation and love and devotion and uncertainty.  There was something so old about her eyes that told of many years of horrific events.

"How is this possible?" he asked quietly.

She gave him a small smile and sniffed back tears.

"Maybe we should be…sitting for this," she suggested.

"Long story?" he asked.

She tried not to burst into tears at the innocent question.  The flippant answer that came to her head was completely inappropriate for their tearful reunion.  'You got 4 centuries to listen?'  

"You could say that," she replied.

He just gave a nod that said he understood and pulled her back against him, just enjoying the gift he had been given.  His Slayer.  

------------------------

Giles felt distinctly uncomfortable as he sat in Buffy's room, Buffy sitting cross-legged on her bed as Giles sat on a chair facing her.  He was having trouble taking his eyes off her, afraid that if he even blinked she would suddenly disappear.  

Buffy cleared her throat, making Giles snap out of his dreary thoughts and he focused completely on her.

"So…how this is possible," she began.  "Well…I was…I was in a hell dimension."

She looked away, not wanting to see Giles reaction throughout her speech.  She had seen the hurt in the eyes of her sister and her best friends when she had revealed that fact to them.  And she knew that Giles would know about the dimension that she had been in.

"It was…it was a dimension called Quortoth," Buffy continued.

Buffy looked up when she heard Giles sharp intake of breath.  He had gone deathly pale and she could see that his hand was shaking.  He had removed his glasses from his eyes, and Buffy could still remember what his idiosyncrasy meant.  He didn't want to look at her while she confessed this to him.  It would be too painful to see her pour her heart out in such a fashion.

"Buffy," he whispered, his voice breaking a little.  "…Qourtoth…it's…it's not possible."

"We spent nearly a year trying to find out about Glory and we never really looked into why she wanted the portal open.  Then that stupid Byzantian Knight guy spilled the beans about her wanting to go home and we never got a chance to work out where her home was.  She opened the portal to it so…it was possible.  Just not very often," she explained.

"Yes I uh…I know about the portal being…time specific, but…Quortoth.  I uh…I have come across it in my research."

Buffy felt her heart catch in her throat.  If Giles had already researched it, then he may well know the truth about her experience.  She almost laughed mentally at the word.  Experience.  Try torture, or hell or the most horrifying time of her life.  Not exactly an experience.

"Oh," Buffy said quietly.

"They…the beings that…that managed to escape from Quortoth…they describe it as the uh…the worst of the worlds," Giles said.

She looked up at him tearfully and hugged her knees tightly.  "They wouldn't be wrong."

Even with his Britsh resolve, Giles couldn't stand the twinge in his Slayer's voice and before Buffy could even realise what had happened, Giles had moved from his seat and onto the bed beside her, gathering his Slayer in his arms, holding her tightly.

It took twenty minutes before Buffy had fully calmed down and caught her breath.  She was still nestled in Giles' arms, although Giles knew it was an action forbidden by the Council, he knew it was something that his Slayer needed from him.  Tangible reassurance that she was back at home with her family.

She sniffled and looked up at him tearfully.  "Sorry," she whispered.

"It's quite alright," he replied, astounded by her apology for breaking down after admitting where she had been.

"Right…so…Quortoth.  Not the best holiday vacation spot, I'll tell you that," she said, making an attempt at levity. 

He looked at her, not unkindly, just the look that told her that she couldn't get away with edging her way around a difficult topic with him.  

"What…what do you want to know?" she asked quietly.

Giles pulled back a little and took in the look of her eyes once more.  He knew the question he needed to ask, but truthfully he was afraid for what the answer would be.

"I uh…I've read a little about Qourtoth and the uh….the time moves differently there to what it does here," he began hesitantly.  He felt and heard Buffy swallow nervously and he knew he had picked a sore topic.  But, he could sense that it was one that Buffy needed to tell the truth about.  "Is that…true?"

Buffy sighed and pulled fully away from her Watcher.  She stood up and moved to the other side of the room, completely confusing Giles.  Why had she moved?  He watched her as she bent down and carefully picked up a piece of white cloth and return to the bed, sitting a little further away from him, but close enough so that she could fall into his arms if she felt the need to.

Giles looked at the material curiously.  He didn't recognise it and couldn't understand why Buffy would put it on her bed after his question.  As she unwrapped the cloth, however, he began to understand.  

"Whenever the Gang ask me that," Buffy began, "I can get away with telling them that I don't know how long I was there for.  And honestly, I couldn't say exactly how long it was, but…I do have a pretty good indication.  And I worked it out a few days ago, but…when I was there…time had no real meaning.  The days kinda blended into each other.  The weeks and months meant nothing to me.  Years passed and I barely noticed, just kept going.  I woulda gone nuts and…if I hadn't had this, I wouldn't have been able to stay sane at all."

Giles looked down at the brown leather book she had taken out of the white material.  She handed it to him and he took it reverently, feeling the need to handle this item with as much care as Buffy did.  He stared at the leather cover, unsure as to what it was, though it did look awfully familiar.  He opened it and suddenly realised why.

"Buffy," he breathed quietly, not understanding how this was possible.  This was the journal he had buried with his Slayer, the journal that the Council had confiscated until Wesley had returned it on the day of the funeral.  But how did it come to be in his Slayer's hands.  And how come the pages were yellowed and falling out, brittle from too much sunlight and not enough moisture in the air?  How come the book which he had buried seven months ago suddenly seemed to be centuries old?

And that was when the answer hit him.  The journal looked to be several centuries old because it _was_ several centuries old.  He swallowed hard and could only let a silent tear fall from his cheek for his Slayer, his daughter, the girl that he loved.  He pulled her into his arms once more and this time, they wept together.


	24. Cerulean

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CERULEAN

Many hours later, Giles had heard the excruciatingly painful story that Buffy had to tell.  She had broken down many times during the telling of it, and Giles had held her as she cried.  By the time she had got to Stephen's role, Giles had nearly completely forgotten the young man that his Slayer had been embracing earlier in the kitchen.

"And I met Stephen," she said, a smile playing on her face.

After the five hours of tears, the slight smile that lit her face was a complete shock to Giles.  He squeezed her hand encouragingly and her smile got wider.

"He and I…it took us about two years before anything happened between us, but…one day we just kinda…happened.  And his dad, Daniel, he married us.  But uh…Daniel…he died.  The next day.  It was awful," Buffy explained.  

"I'm sorry," Giles whispered, for what seemed to be the millionth time in so many hours.  That was all he really could say to her as she explained what it had been like.  How lonely it had been.  How empty and hollow and frighteningly endless.

"And then Whistler comes along and tells me that I finally figured it out.  That I had finally completed a Circle of Three," Buffy said.

Giles looked up at her.  "The Circle of Three?  I've heard of that."

"It's a ritual," Buffy said.  

"Yes.  A ritual that can be performed by two beings that have come together in a pure and holy state and have created a third being," Giles said, remembering the wording of the research he had done whilst in Oxford so many years ago.

Buffy nodded and Giles suddenly fully comprehended exactly what she was saying.

"Good lord," he breathed quietly.  "That means…that you're…"

"Pregnant," Buffy finished.  She smiled and nodded at him, tears in her eyes.

Giles smiled widely.  His Christmas Eve had been full of many wonderful, and not so wonderful surprises.  Having his Slayer back was one of the best things that could happen to him, but what she had gone through to be back here made him feel a little guilty at his joy, though he didn't properly understand why.  To hear that his Slayer was back, married and going to have a childe made up for that guilt.

"I haven't told anyone about it yet, but…not even Stephen," Buffy admitted.  "I just…I was afraid that something might have gone wrong with the ritual and…well, coming back and everything.  I didn't want to get his hopes up."

Giles nodded, understanding what she meant.  His Slayer was used to being disappointed, but that didn't mean that she would want anyone else to feel the disappointment as well.

"When are you going to tell him?" he asked gently.

"Tomorrow.  Kind of a Christmas gift," she explained.

He nodded and the room fell into silence.  Buffy let out a sigh of relief, grateful to finally have everything off her chest.  She stood up and reached her hand out to him.  He took it and stood as well.

"We should get downstairs, they're…they might be worried.  And…Stephen gets a bit jealous if I spend too much time alone with a guy," Buffy explained, a small grin on her face at the strange idea of anything romantic happening between herself and her Watcher.

"I'll have to assure him that my intentions are completely honourable," Giles said with a smile.

Buffy grinned and linked arms with him, pulling him out of the room and down the stairs.

"So…what'cha get me for Christmas?"

Giles could only laugh and pat her hand, mentally resolving to go to the shopping centre the second he got a chance to make sure his Slayer wasn't left out in the gift department.  
  



	25. White

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: WHITE

Christmas morning came with a fine sheen of white snow, something that Sunnydale hadn't seen for three years.  Not since the Christmas that Angel had tried to kill himself.

Stephen was completely in awe of the gentle snowflakes that had fallen and had sat in the falling snow for an hour with his wife in his arms, staring at the cloudy sky.

"I've never seen anything like this," he whispered quietly.

She leant into him further and let a tear slip from her cheeks.  She had cried more in the last four days that she had been back than she had in the four hundred years she had been in Quortoth.  But she could understand Stephen's complete awe-stricken view of this world.  Compared to the redness of the sky and the barrenness of the land, Sunnydale seemed like a paradise.

The moment was ruined by Dawn bounding down the porch stairs and yelling "Merry Christmas" at the top of her lungs, probably awakening the neighbourhood at the early hour of six thirty.  Buffy smiled indulgently and stood up, offering her hand to Stephen to help him.  Hand-in-hand with her husband and arm-in-arm with her sister, they retreated into the house to find Willow, Tara and Giles sitting in the living room.

Giles looked up and smiled as he saw his Slayer enter the room.  He had woken up many times during the night, fearing that the entire meeting with Buffy had been an incredibly vivid dream, but the journal that had laid under his pillow had assured him that his Slayer was back.  That she had survived, partly because of him.

Willow and Tara waved tiredly and motioned for the three of them to join them.  Stephen sat beside a shy Tara and Buffy took a seat on her husband's lap, Dawn seating herself on the floor.

"Can we open the presents yet?" she pleaded.

Buffy just rolled her eyes, glad that some things would never change.

"We still have to wait for the others to get here, remember?" she reminded her sister gently.

Dawn looked up at her sister and poked out her tongue.  "Spoilsport."

Dawn was perfectly happy, however, to let her sister ruin her fun.  As long as her sister was alive to do it, she would be thrilled no matter what the circumstance.  She still had yet to sit down with her sister and have a full-on talk with her, but she knew it could wait.  Things still needed to be settled down and until everything was back to normal, that particular conversation could wait.  That and Dawn really didn't know how to tell her sister 'thank you' for dying in her place.  

The door opened, Xander dragging in a complaining Anya who was loudly questioning why they had to be awake so early when they could have been in bed at home doing 'other…more fun things.  Like having orgasms.'  Stephen had turned bright red, only used to Buffy's teasing innuendos, rather than Anya's tactless and overt statements.

Spike walked in twenty minutes later, complaining that he had almost been caught in the sun because the snow fall was slowly clearing.  No one had been sympathetic to his cause however, and he had quickly abandoned his complaints.  

He rolled his eyes as he saw Buffy sitting on top of Stephen, but a quick glare from Giles had told him that he was to leave them alone.  And the vampire really couldn't blame the Watcher for the glare either.  Having Buffy back had seemed to make everything okay once more.  The group seemed to flow far better now, and everyone seemed to be smiling and relaxed.  That and having Buffy back was far better than anything he could have wanted for Christmas.

The door opened again and Spike was immediately on his feet a scowl on his face.

"What the bloody hell are you doing here Peaches?"

Angel had returned the scowl and had looked as though he was ready to stake his childe then and there.  Dawn had stood up and pulled Spike away from his sire, leading him back into the living room, a move that Angel hated seeing.  He sincerely hoped that Dawn would have learnt from her older sister's mistakes about vampires.

Angel followed them into the living room and Buffy immediately felt Stephen tense up beneath her.  She looked at him worriedly and followed his gaze, noticing Angel for the first time.  She looked at her ex-lover apologetically.

"Maybe you shouldn't be here Angel," she said gently.

Angel looked extremely hurt and he could feel the tears in his eyes.  He had thought that after driving them from LA to Sunnydale, things could begin to get better between them.  He had had to return to LA when Cordelia had received a vision that needed his attention, and though he had hated leaving when he desperately wanted to see his son, he knew that the Powers That Be wanted him away from Sunnydale.

Angel took in a deep unneeded breath and just nodded silently.  He turned to leave, all eyes on him.

Stephen looked at the young man who was his father.  He couldn't understand how this vampire had come to be his biological father, but he knew enough about fate and destiny that it hadn't been an accident.  And Buffy's explanations of the difference between Angel and Angelus had begun sinking in over the last few days.  Plus, his semi-camaraderie with Spike was making him see demons in a new light.

"Wait," he called.

Angel stopped, his undead heart catching in his throat.  He turned and saw his son shift Buffy off his lap so that he could stand.

The room went silent as father and son stared at each other uncomfortably.  Buffy put a comforting hand on Stephen's back, a small and non-intruding gesture that Stephen leant back into, silently thanking his wife for her support.

"You can stay," he offered, not daring to look at Angel.  "If you want to."

Angel could only nod and slowly joined the group in the living room.  Willow and Tara squished up, Willow sitting on Tara's lap as Stephen and Buffy sat down with Angel next to them.

Spike looked towards Dawn in confusion.

"What's the Poof got to do with anything?" he asked.

Dawn shrugged, and looked towards her sister.  Buffy had never explained why it had been Angel who had driven them from LA to Sunnydale.  

Buffy looked towards the room who was staring on in fascination, wondering why Angel was there and being almost calm about his ex-lover sitting on top of a man who had just told him that he was welcome to stay.

"Maybe we should explain a few things," Buffy said quietly.

Stephen squeezed her hand encouragingly and Buffy took in a deep breath.

"Stephen is Angel's son," Buffy said, about to go further in the explanations but all hell seemed to break lose in the room.

"Son?!"

"Good lord-"

"Fricken hell!"

"Oh my-"

A giggle had startled the group into silence and Willow went a bright shade of red under the groups close scrutiny.

"Sorry, it's just…when you think about it…Buffy is Angel's daughter-in-law."

The group had looked at her blankly and quickly burst into a round of laughter, except for Angel and Stephen who had twin looks of a combination of horror and amusement on their faces.

They managed to calm down and Dawn looked between the two men quizzically.

"Wouldn't we have known about a twenty year old son?  I mean, you didn't have a son last time you were in Sunnydale.  Did you?"

Angel swallowed nervously, hating having to explain the story of he and Darla.  Cordelia had blown up at him about it, and he was expecting much the same reaction from the Sunnydale Scoobies.

"There was a prophecy.  And technically, he was only born two months ago.  He was taken two weeks ago and he came back a few days ago.  Time moves differently in Quortoth," Angel explained.

"Yeah, Buffy mentioned that," Dawn said.

"Two weeks?" Tara asked quietly, looking at the young man beside her.  "Time must m-move very dif-differently there."

Willow looked towards her lover, stricken and quickly turned her eyes towards Buffy who looked at her panicked, shaking her head empathically.  Willow bit her lip but kept her suspicions to herself.  She would ask Buffy later when the others weren't around.

Buffy smiled as she realised that her friend would keep her secret.  She sighed happily and leant back in her husband's embrace.  Life couldn't have been more perfect.  She was surrounded by family and friends, she was in the arms of her husband and the father of her child and she was finally out of the hell dimension that had been her prison for so many years.  The conversations could wait for later, explanations and more tears could be put on hold.  All she wanted to do right now was let her sister dive under the tree and hand out the presents.  And Buffy would begin to erase the memories of Quortoth that plagued her mind.  Giving Stephen a gentle kiss, she knew that even though it would be hard, they would get through it.  Together.  Just like always.  And she could slowly forget that she'd ever even known the dullness of the colours of Quortoth.

THE END

(Well…it's finally finished.  Twenty-five chapters done.  Thank you sooo much for taking a chance with this fic.  I know that a lot of people don't like reading things that aren't to do with their favourite couples, cos…yeah…thanks for trying this one out!!  Mega thanks to Sarah my wonderful flatmate.  You may not have helped with this fic, but you've helped cos you were my chum!  And to Adam.  Just cos I love ya!  And to Rik, even though you and Adz will never EVER know about my whole writing fetish.  Please, have a look at my website!  Bloody Summers True Love  ) 


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